CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 


CREATIVE    IMPULSE 
IN   INDUSTRY 

A  Proposition  for  Educators 


BY 
HELEN  MAROT 

ACTHOB  OF  "AMERICA!!  LABOB  UHrKHrt" 


NEW  YORK 

E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 

681  FIFTH  AVENUE 


COPYEIGHT,   1918, 
BY  E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 

All  Rights  Reserved 


First  printing September,  1918 

Second  printing. .  .December,  1918 
Third  printing August,  1919 


MAIN  LIBRARY 


Printed  In  the  United  States  of  America 


TO 
CAROLINE  PRATT 

WHOSE  APPRECIATION  OP  EDUCATIONAL  FACTORS  IN  THE  PLAT 
WORLD  OF  CHILDREN,  INTENSIFIED  FOR  THE  AUTHOR  THE  SIGNIFI- 
CANCE OF  THE  GROWTH  PROCESSES  IN  INDUSTRIAL  AND  ADULT  LIFE. 


PEEFACE 

THE  Bureau  of  Educational  Experiments  is  a 
group  of  men  and  women  who  are  trying  to  face 
the  modern  problems  of  education  in  a  scientific 
spirit.  They  are  conducting  and  helping  others 
to  conduct  experiments  which  hold  promise  of 
finding  out  more  about  children  as  well  as  how 
to  set  up  school  environments  which  shall  pro- 
vide for  the  children's  growth.  From  these  ex- 
periments they  hope  eventually  may  evolve  a 
laboratory  school. 

Among  their  surveys  the  past  year,  one  by 
Helen  Marot  has  resulted  in  this  timely  and  sig- 
nificant book.  The  experiment  which  is  out- 
lined at  the  close  seems  to  the  Bureau  to  be  of 
real  moment, — one  of  which  both  education  and 
industry  should  take  heed.  They  earnestly  hope 
it  may  be  tried  immediately.  In  that  event,  the 
Bureau  hopes  to  work  with  Miss  Marot  in  bring- 
ing her  experiment  to  completion. 

THE  BUREAU  OF  EDUCATIONAL  EXPERIMENTS, 
16  West  Eighth  Street, 
New  York  City. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    PRODUCTION  AND  CREATIVE  EFFORT  .     .        1 

II.    ADAPTING    PEOPLE   TO    INDUSTRY.      THE 

AMERICAN  WAY 29 

III.  ADAPTING    PEOPLE    TO    INDUSTRY.     THE 

GERMAN  WAY 68 

IV.  EDUCATIONAL  INDUSTRY  AND  ASSOCIATED 

ENTERPRISE  .  108 


CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 


INTRODUCTION 

A  FRIEND  of  mine  in  describing  the  Russian 
people  as  lie  observed  them  in  their  present 
revolution  said  it  was  possible  for  them  to  ac- 
cept new  ideas  because  they  were  uneducated ; 
they  did  not,  he  said,  labor  under  the  difficulty 
common  among  educated  people  of  having  to 
get  rid  of  old  ideas  before  they  took  on  new 
ones.  I  think  what  he  had  in  mind  to  say  was 
that  it  is  difficult  to  accept  new  ideas  when 
your  mind  is  filled  with  ideas  which  are  insti- 
tutional. The  ideas  which  come  out  of  formal 
education,  out  of  the  schools,  out  of  books, 
are  ideas  which  have  been  stamped  as  the  true 
and  important  ones ;  many  of  them  are,  as  they 
have  proved  their  worth  in  service.  But  as 
they  represent  authority,  they  pass  into  a 
people's  mind  with  the  full  weight  of  an  ac- 
cepted fact.  The  schools,  the  colleges,  and  the 
books  are  not  responsible  primarily  for  the 
fixed  ideas;  every  established  institution  con- 
tributes fixed  ideas  as  well  as  fixed  customs 

xiii 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

and  rules  of  action.  The  schools  and  colleges 
circulate  and  interpret  them.  The  movement 
for  industrial  education  in  the  United  States 
is  an  illustration  of  this. 

The  ideas  which  we  find  there  have  not 
sprung  from  schools  or  colleges  but  from  in- 
dustry. The  institution  of  industry,  rather  than 
the  institution  of  education,  dominates  thought 
in  industrial  education  courses.  It  is  the  in- 
stitution of  industry  as  it  has  affected  the  life 
of  every  man,  woman  and  child,  which  has  in- 
hibited educational  thought  in  conjunction  with 
schemes  for  industrial  schools.  No  established 
system  of  education  or  none  proposed  is  more 
circumscribed  by  institutionalized  thought  than 
the  vocational  and  industrial  school  movement. 

Educators  have  opposed  the  desire  of  busi- 
ness to  attach  the  schools  to  the  industrial  enter- 
prise. They  have  rightly  opposed  it  because  in- 
dustry under  the  influence  of  business  prosti- 
tutes effort.  Nevertheless,  hand  in  hand  with 
industry,  the  schools  must  function ;  unattached 
to  the  human  hive  they  are  denied  participa- 
tion in  life.  Promoters  of  industrial  education 
are  hung  up  between  this  fact  of  prostituted 
industry  and  their  desire  to  establish  the  chil- 
dren's connection  with  life.  They  have  tried  to 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

meet  opposing  interests;  they  have  not  recog- 
nized all  the  facts  because  the  facts  were  con- 
flicting, and  their  minds  as  well  as  their  in- 
terests, institutionally  speaking,  were  committed 
to  both. 

This  was  the  impasse  we  had  apparently 
reached  when  the  war  occurred ;  it  is  where  we 
still  are.  But  ahead  of  us,  sometime,  the  war 
will  'end  and  we  shall  be  called  then  to  face  a 
period  of  reconstruction.  The  reconstruction 
will  center  around  industry.  The  efficiency 
with  which  a  worker  serves  industry  will  be 
the  test  of  his  patriotic  fervor,  as  his  service 
in  the  army  is  made  the  test  during  this  time 
of  war.  All  institutions  will  be  examined  and 
called  upon  to  reorganize  in  such  ways  as  will 
contribute  to  the  enterprise  of  raising  indus- 
trial processes  to  the  standard  of  greatest  ef- 
ficiency. 

The  standard  of  mechanical  efficiency  as  it 
was  set  by  Germany  was  one  of  refined  brutal- 
ity. During  the  progress  of  the  war,  the  sig- 
nificance of  that  standard  is  being  grafted  into 
the  consciousness  of  the  common  people  of 
those  nations  which  have  opposed  Germany  in 
arms.  It  is  the  industrial  efficiency  of  Germany, 
uninhibited  by  a  sense  of  human  development 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

that  has  made  her  victories  possible.  It  is  that 
efficiency  which  has  kept  a  large  part  of  the 
world  on  the  defensive  for  over  three  and  a  half 
years.  Germany's  military  strategy  is,  in  the 
main,  her  industrial  strategy;  it  represents  her 
efficiency  in  turning  technology  to  the  account 
of  an  imperial  purpose. 

But  those  organizations  of  manufacturers  and 
business  politicians  who  believe  that  the  same 
schemes  of  efficiency  will  function  in  America 
will  call  upon  the  people  after  the  war,  it  is 
safe  to  predict,  to  emulate  the  methods  which 
have  given  Germany  its  untoward  strength. 
While  it  is  these  methods  which  have  made 
much  hated  Germany  a  menace  to  the  world  and 
while  the  menace  is  felt  by  our  own  people,  the 
significance  of  the  methods  is  but  vaguely  real- 
ized. It  is  probable  that  after  the  war  it  will  be 
said  that  it  was  not  the  German  methods  which 
were  objectionable,  but  that  it  was  their  use  in 
an  international  policy.  Before  the  time  for  re- 
construction comes,  I  hope  we  shall  discover 
how  intrinsically  false  those  methods  are ;  and 
how  untrue  to  the  growth  process  is  the  sort  of 
efficiency  Germany  has  developed.  I  hope  also 
that  we  shall  realize  that  a  policy  of  paternalism 
has  no  place  in  the  institutional  life  of  our  own 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

country.  Before  the  war  these  German  methods 
bore  the  character  of  high  success,  and  they  had 
a  large  following  in  this  country.  There  are  in- 
deed many  thousands  of  men  and  women  in  the 
United  States,  who,  while  giving  all  they  most 
care  for,  for  the  prosecution  of  the  war  against 
Germany  still  support  industrial  and  political 
policies  and  dogmas  which  are  in  spirit  essen- 
tially Prussian.  The  professional  Reformer 
here  in  America  is  not  even  yet  fully  conscious 
that  German  paternalism  (a  phase  of  German 
efficiency)  is  the  token  of  an  enslaved  people. 

The  German  educational  system  as  much  if 
not  more  than  its  other  imperial  schemes  has 
been  instrumental  in  developing  the  German 
brand  of  industrial  efficiency.  The  perfection  in 
Germany  of  its  technological  processes  is  made 
possible  as  the  youth  of  the  country  has  been 
consecrated  and  sacrificed  to  the  development 
of  this  perfection  in  the  early  years  of  school 
training.  Parents  contribute  their  children 
freely  to  an  educational  system  which  fits  them 
into  an  industrial  institution  which  has  an  im- 
perial destiny  to  fulfill.  Each  person's  place 
in  the  life  of  the  nation  is  made  for  him  during 
his  early  years,  like  a  predestined  fact. 

American  business  men  before  the  war  ap- 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

predated  the  educational  system  which  made 
people  over  into  workers  without  will  or  pur- 
pose of  their  own.  But  the  situation  was  em- 
barrassing as  these  business  men  were  not  in  a 
position  to  insist  that  the  schools,  supported  by 
the  people,  should  prepare  the  children  to  serve 
industry  for  the  sake  of  the  state,  while  indus- 
try was  pursued  solely  for  private  interest. 
Their  embarrassment,  however,  will  be  less 
acute  under  the  conditions  of  industrial  recon- 
struction which  will  follow  the  war.  Then  as 
patriots,  under  the  necessity  of  competing  with 
Germany  industrially,  they  will  feel  free  to  urge 
that  the  German  scheme  of  industrial  education, 
possibly  under  another  name,  be  extended  here 
and  adopted  as  a  national  policy.  In  other 
words  as  Germany  has  evolved  its  methods  of 
attaining  industrial  efficiency,  and  as  the  schools 
have  played  the  leading  part  in  the  attainment, 
the  German  system  of  industrial  education,  pri- 
vate business  may  argue,  should  be  given  for 
patriotic  reasons  full  opportunity  in  the  United 
States.  If  the  German  system  were  introduced 
here,  of  course  it  is  not  certain  that  it  could 
deliver  wage  workers  more  ready  and  servile, 
less  single-purposed  in  their  industrial  activity 
than  they  are  now.  It  was  in  Germany  a  com- 


INTRODUCTION  xix 

paratively  simple  matter  for  the  schools  to  make 
over  the  children  into  effective  and  efficient 
servants,  for,  as  Professor  Veblen  explains,  the 
psychology  of  the  German  people  was  still  feu- 
dal when  the  modern  system  of  industry,  with 
its  own  characteristic  enslavement,  was  im- 
posed, ready-made,  upon  them;  the  German 
people  unlike  the  Anglo-Saxon  had  not  experi- 
enced the  liberating  effects  of  the  political  phil- 
osophy which  developed  along  with  modern 
technology  in  both  England  and  America.* 

First,  then,  it  is  not  certain  that  the  system 
of  German  industrial  education  would  succeed ; 
and,  second,  if  it  did  succeed  it  is  not  the  sort 
of  education  that  America  wants. 

America  wants  industrial  efficiency,  it  must 
have  efficient  workers  if  it  holds  its  place  among 
nations,  and  American  people  will  prove  their 
efficiency  or  their  inefficiency  as  they  are  capa- 
ble of  using  the  heritage  which  industrial  evo- 
lution has  given  the  world.  But  what  shall  we 
use  this  efficiency  for?  For  the  sake  of  the 
heritage?  For  the  sake  of  business?  For  the 
sake  of  Empire? 

Business  knows  very  clearly  why  it  wants 

*Thorstcin  Veblen — Imperial  Germany  and  the  Indugtrial 
Revolution. 


xx  INTRODUCTION 

it,  but  as  a  rule  most  of  us  are  not  clearly  con- 
scious that  we  need,  for  the  sake  of  our  expan- 
sive existence,  to  be  industrially  efficient.  We 
are  not  even  conscious  that  industry  is  the  great 
field  for  adventure  and  growth,  because  we  use 
that  field  not  for  the  creative  but  for  the  exploi- 
tive  purpose. 

It  is  the  present  duty  of  American  educators 
to  realize  these  two  points :  that  industry  is  the 
great  field  for  adventure  and  growth;  that  as 
it  is  used  now  the  opportunities  for  growth 
are  inhibited  in  the  only  field  where  productive 
experience  can  be  a  common  one.  Shortly  it 
will  be  the  mission  of  educators  to  show  that  by 
opening  up  the  field  for  creative  purpose,  fer- 
vor for  industrial  enterprise  and  good  work- 
manship may  be  realized ;  that  only  as  the  con- 
tent of  industry  in  its  administration  as  well 
as  in  the  technique  of  its  processes  is  opened  up 
for  experiment  and  first-hand  experience,  will 
a  universal  impulse  for  work  be  awakened.  It 
is  for  educators,  together  with  engineers  and 
architects,  to  demonstrate  to  the  world  that 
while  the  idea  of  service  to  a  political  state  may 
have  the  power  to  accomplish  large  results,  all 
productive  force  is  artificially  sustained  which 
is  not  dependent  on  men's  desire  to  do  creative 


INTRODUCTION  xxi 

work.  A  state  as  we  have  seen,  may  invoke  the 
idea  of  service.  It  might  represent  the  produc- 
tive interests  of  a  community  if  those  interests 
sprang  from  the  expansive  experience  of  a  peo- 
ple in  their  creative  adventures. 

In  the  reconstructive  period  educators  may 
have  their  opportunity  to  extend  the  concept 
that  the  creative  process  is  the  educative  proc- 
ess, or  as  Professor  Dewey  states  it,  the  educa- 
tive process  is  the  process  of  growth.  The  re- 
construction period  will  be  a  time  of  formative 
thought;  institutions  will  be  attacked  and  on 
the  defensive ;  and  out  of  the  great  need  of  the 
nations  there  may  come  change.  Educators  will 
find  their  opportunity  as  they  discover  condi- 
tions under  which  the  great  enterprise  of  in- 
dustry may  be  educational  and  as  they  repudiate 
or  oppose  institutions  which  exclude  educational 
factors. 

It  is  for  educators  to  realize  first  of  all  that 
there  can  be  no  social  progress  while  there  is 
antagonism  between  growth  in  wealth  (which 
is  industry)  and  growth  in  individuals  (which 
is  education) ;  that  the  fundamental  antagon- 
isms which  are  apparent  in  the  current  arrange- 
ment are  not  between  industry  and  education 
but  between  education  and  business.  They  must 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

know  that  as  business  regulates  and  controls 
industry  for  ulterior  purposes,  that  is  for  other 
purposes  than  production  of  goods,  it  thwarts 
the  development  of  individual  lives  and  the 
evolution  of  society ;  that  it  values  a  worker  not 
for  his  potential  productivity  but  for  his  imme- 
diate contribution  to  the  annual  stock  dividend ; 
or  if,  as  in  Germany  where  his  productive  po- 
tentiality is  valued  in  terms  of  longer  time,  it 
is  for  the  imperial  intention  of  the  state  and  not 
for  the  growth  of  the  individual  or  the  progress 
of  civilization. 


CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN 
INDUSTRY 

CHAPTER  I 

PRODUCTION  AND  CREATIVE  EFFORT 

As  a  human  experience,  the  act  of  creating, 
the  process  of  fabricating  wealth,  has  been  at 
different  times  as  worthy  of  celebration  as  the 
possession  of  it.  Before  business  enterprise  and 
machine  production  discredited  handwork,  art 
for  art's  sake,  work  for  the  love  of  work,  were 
conceivable  human  emotions.  But  to-day,  a  Ce- 
zanne who  paints  pictures  and  leaves  them  in 
the  field  to  perish  is  considered  by  the  general 
run  of  people,  in  communities  inured  to  mod- 
ern industrial  enterprise,  as  being  not  quite 
right  in  his  head.  Their  estimate  is  of  course 
more  or  less  true.  But  such  valuations  are 
made  without  the  help  of  creative  inspiration, 
although  the  functioning  of  a  product  has  its 


? :  qBEATfvE^IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

creative  significance.  ^The  creative  significance 
of  a  product  in  use,  as  well  as  an  appreciation  of 
the  act  of  creating,  would  be  evident  if  modern 
production  of  wealth,  under  the  influence  of 
business  enterprise  and  machine  technology, 
had  not  fairly  well  extinguished  the  apprecia- 
tion and  the  joy  of  creative  experience  in  coun- 
tries where  people  have  fallen  under  its  in- 
fluence so  completely  as  in  our  own.J 

It  is  usual  in  economic  considerations  to  credit 
the  period  of  craftsmanship  as  a  time  in  the 
evolution  of  wealth  production  that  was  rich  in 
creative  effort  and  opportunity  for  the  individ- 
ual worker.  The  craftsmanship  period  is  val- 
ued in  retrospect  for  its  educative  influence. 
There  was  opportunity  then  as  there  is  not 
now  for  the  worker  to  gain  the  valuable  experi- 
ence of  initiating  an  idea  and  carrying  the  pro- 
duction of  an  article  to  its  completion  for  use 
and  sale  in  the  market;  there  was  the  oppor- 
tunity then  also  as  there  is  not  now,  for  the 
worker  to  gain  a  high  degree  of  technique  and  a 
valuation  of  his  workmanship.  It  is  character- 
istic of  workmanship  that  its  primary  consider- 
ation is  serviceability  or  utility.  The  creative 
impulse  and  the  creative  effort  may  or  may  not 
express  workmanship  or  take  it  into  account 


PRODUCTION— CREATIVE  EFFORT  3 

Workmanship  in  its  consideration  of  service- 
ability oftentimes  arrives  at  beauty  and  classic 
production,  when  creative  impulse  without  the 
spirit  of  workmanship  fails.  The  craftsman- 
ship period  deserves  rank,  but  the  high  rank 
which  is  given  it  is  due  in  part  to  its  historical 
relation  to  the  factory  era  which  followed  and 
crushed  it.  While  craftsmanship  represented 
expansive  development  in  workmanship,  it  is 
not  generally  recognized  that  the  Guild  organ- 
ization of  the  crafts  developed  modern  busi- 
ness enterprise.*  Business  is  concerned  wholly 
with  utility,  and  not  like  workmanship,  with 
standards  of  production,  except  as  those  stand- 
ards contain  an  increment  of  value  in  profits 
to  the  owners  of  wealth.  It  was  during  the 
Guild  period  that  business  came  to  value  work- 
manship because  it  contained  that  increment. 
In  spite  of  business  interest,  however,  the 
standard  of  workmanship  was  set  by  skilled 
craftsmen,  and  their  standards  represented  in 
a  marked  degree  the  market  value  of  the  goods 
produced  by  them. 

While  the  exploitation  of  the  skill  of  the 
workman  in  the  interest  of  the  owners  of  raw 
materials  and  manufactured  goods,  had  its  de- 

•Thorstein  Veblen;  Instinct  of  Workmanship,  pp.  211-212. 


4    CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

pressing  and  corrupting  influence  on  creative 
effort,  the  creative  impulse  found  a  stimulus  in 
the  respect  a  community  still  paid  the  skill  and 
ability  of  the  worker.  It  was  not  until  machine 
standards  superseded  craft  standards  and  dis- 
credited them  that  the  processes  of  production, 
the  acts  of  fabrication,  lost  their  standards  of 
workmanship  and  their  educational  value  for 
V  the  worker.  The  discredits  were  psychological 
and  economic;  they  revolutionized  the  intellec- 
tual and  moral  concepts  of  men  in  relation  to 
their  work  and  the  production  of  wealth. 

As  machine  production  superseded  crafts- 
manship the  basis  of  fixing  the  price  of  an  ar- 
ticle shifted  from  values  fixed  by  the  standards 
of  workers  to  standards  of  machines,  Professor 
Veblen  says  to  standards  of  salesmen.  It  is 
along  these  lines  that  mechanical  science  ap- 
plied to  the  production  of  wealth,  has  eliminated 
the  personality  of  the  workers.  A  worker  is  nc 
longer  reflected  in  goods  on  sale ;  his  personal- 
ity has  passed  into  the  machine  which  has  met 
the  requirements  of  mass  production. 

The  logical  development  of  factory  organ- 
ization has  been  the  complete  coordination 
of  all  factors  which  are  auxiliary  to  mechanical 
power  and  devices.  The  most  important  auxil- 


PEODUCTION— CREATIVE  EFFORT   5 

iary  factor  is  human  labor.  A  worker  is  a  per- 
fected factory  attachment  as  he  surrenders  him- 
self to  the  time  and  the  rhythm  of  the  machine 
and  its  functioning ;  as  he  supplements  without 
loss  whatever  human  faculties  the  machine 
lacks,  whatever  imperfection  hampers  the  ma- 
chine in  the  satisfaction  of  its  needs.  If  it  lacks 
eyes,  he  sees  for  it ;  he  walks  for  it,  if  it  is  with- 
out legs ;  and  he  pulls,  drags,  lifts,  if  it  needs 
arms.  All  of  these  things  are  done  by  the  fac- 
tory worker  at  the  pace  set  by  the  machine  and 
under  its  direction  and  command.  A  worker's 
indulgence  in  his  personal  desires  or  impulses 
hinders  the  machine  and  lowers  his  attachment 
value. 

This  division  of  the  workers  into  eyes,  arms, 
fingers,  legs,  the  plucking  out  of  some  one  of 
his  faculties  and  discarding  the  rest  of  the  man 
as  valueless,  has  seemed  to  be  an  organic  re- 
quirement of  machine  evolution.  So  commend- 
able the  scheme  has  been  to  business  enterprise 
that  this  division  of  labor  has  been  carried  from 
the  machine  shop  and  the  factory  to  the  scien- 
tific laboratories  where  experiment  and  dis- 
covery in  new  processes  of  technology  are  de- 
veloped, and  where,  it  is  popularly  supposed,  a 
high  order  of  intelligence  is  required.  The 


6    CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

organization  of  technological  laboratories,  like 
the  organization  of  construction  shops  to  which 
they  are  auxiliary,  is  based  on  the  breaking 
up  of  a  problem  which  is  before  the  laboratory 
for  its  solution.  The  chemists,  physicists,  ma- 
chinists and  draftsmen  are  isolated  as  they 
work  out  their  assigned  tasks  without  specific 
knowledge  of  what  the  general  problem  is  and 
how  it  is  being  attacked.  Small  technological 
laboratories  are  still  in  existence  where  the 
general  problem  in  hand  is  presented  as  a  whole 
to  the  whole  engineering  staff,  and  is  left  to 
them  as  a  group  for  independent  and  associated 
experimentation.  But  even  in  such  cases  the 
technological  content  does  not  necessarily  sup- 
ply the  impulse  to  solve  the  problem  or  secure 
a  free  and  voluntary  participation  in  its  solu- 
tion. Those  who  are  interested  in  its  solution 
are  inspired  by  its  economic  value  for  them. 
In  all  technological  laboratories,  either  where 
the  problem  is  broken  up  and  its  parts  distrib- 
uted among  the  employees  of  the  laboratory,  or 
where  it  is  given  to  them  as  a  whole  for  solu- 
tion, it  is  given  not  as  a  sequence  in  the  creative 
purpose  of  the  individuals  who  are  at  work  on 
it,  nor  is  its  final  solution  necessarily  deter- 
mined by  its  use  and  wont  in  a  community. 


PRODUCTION— CREATIVE  EFFORT  7 

Problems  brought  to  the  laboratory  are  tainted 
with  the  motive  of  industry  which  is  not  crea- 
tive, but  exploitive. 

The  tenure  of  each  man  employed  in  produc- 
tion is  finally  determined  not  by  any  creative  in- 
terest of  his  own  or  of  his  employer  but  by 
whether  in  the  last  analysis,  he  conforms  bet- 
ter than  another  man  to  the  exigencies  of  prof- 
its. If  profits  and  creative  purpose  happen  to 
be  one  and  the  same  thing,  his  place  in  an  in- 
dustrial establishment  has  some  bearing  on  his 
intrinsic  worth.  Under  such  circumstances  his 
interest  in  the  creative  purpose  of  the  establish- 
ment would  have  a  foundation,  and  he  himself 
could  value  better  than  he  otherwise  would  his 
own  part  in  the  enterprise. 

The  economic  organization  of  modern  society 
though  built  on  the  common  people's  produc- 
tive energy  has  discounted  their  creative  poten- 
tiality. We  hold  to  the  theory  that  men  are 
equal  in  their  opportunity  to  capture  and  own 
wealth;  that  their  ability  in  that  respect  is 
proof  of  their  ability  to  create  it;  a  proof  of 
their  inherent  capacity.  It  is  a  proof,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  of  their  ability  to  compete  in  the 
general  scheme  of  capture;  their  ability  to  ex- 
ploit wealth  successfully.  While  the  prevailing 


8    CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

economic  theory  of  production  takes  for  granted 
men's  creative  potentiality  there  is  no  provision 
in  our  industrial  institution  for  the  common  run 
of  men  to  function  creatively.  There  is  no  at- 
tempt in  the  general  scheme  for  trueing-up  or 
estimating  the  creative  ability  of  workers.  In 
the  market,  where  the  value  of  goods  is  deter- 
mined, a  machine  tender  has  a  better  chance 
than  a  craftsman.  The  popular  belief  is  that 
the  ability  of  workers  has  native  limitations, 
that  these  limitations  are  absolute  and  that  they 
are  fixed  at  or  before  birth.  This  belief  is  a 
tenet  among  those  who  hold  positions  of  indus- 
trial mastery.  Managers  of  industry  for  in- 
stance who  control  a  situation  and  create  an 
environment,  demand  that  those  who  serve  them 
meet  the  requirements  which  they  have  fixed. 
They  do  not  recognize  that  industrial  ability 
depends  largely  on  the  opportunity  which  an  in- 
dividual has  had  to  make  adjustments  to  his 
surroundings  and  on  his  opportunity  to  master 
them  through  experiment.  A  factory  employee 
is  required  to  do  a  piece  of  work;  and  he  does 
it,  not  because  he  is  interested  in  the  process 
or  the  object,  but  because  his  employer  wants 
it  done. 
In  Anglo-Saxon  and  Teutonic  countries, 


PRODUCTION— CREATIVE  EFFORT  9 

where  people  have  fallen  most  completely  under 
the  influence  of  machine  production  and  busi- 
ness enterprise,  and  where  they  have  lost  by 
the  way  their  conception  of  their  creative  po- 
tentiality, work  is  universally  conceived  as 
something  which  people  endure  for  the  sake  of 
being  "paid  off."  Being  paid  off,  it  seems 
abundantly  clear,  is  the  only  reason  a  sane  man 
can  have  for  working.  After  he  is  paid  off  the 
assumption  is  his  pfpsure  will  begin.  A  popu- 
lar idea  of  play  isflhe  absence  of  work,  the 
consumption  of  wealth,  being  entertained.  Be- 
ing entertained  indeed  is  as  near  as  most  adult 
men  in  these  countries  come  to  play.  Their 
Sundays  and  holidays  are  depressing  occasions, 
shadowed  by  a  forlorn  expectancy  of  something 
which  never  comes  off.  w 

The  capacity  of  the  French  people  for  enjoy- 
ing their  holidays  is  much  the  same  as  their 
capacity  for  enjoying  their  work.  This,  no 
doubt,  is  a  matter  of  native  habituation.  But 
however  they  came  by  it,  it  has  had  its  part  in 
determining  the  industrial  conditions  of  France. 
The  love  of  the  people  for  making  things  has 
resisted  in  a  remarkable  way  the  domination 
of  machine  industry  and  modern  factory  or- 
ganization. The  French  work  shop,  averaging 


10  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

six  persons,  is  as  characteristic  of  France  as 
the  huge  factory  organization  with  the  most 
modern  mechanical  equipment  is  characteristic 
of  American  industry.  As  the  workers  in  these 
shops  participate  more  intimately  in  the  fabri- 
cation of  goods  they  come  more  nearly  to  a  real 
participation  in  productive  enterprise.  This 
close  contact  with  the  actual  processes  of  pro- 
duction gives  the  workers  a  sense  of  power.  A 
sense  of  their  relation  to  the  processes  and  their 
ability  to  control  them  engenders  courage.  In- 
deed it  is  the  absence  of  fear,  rather  than  the 
absence  of  work,  that  determines  the  capacity 
of  men  for  play. 

It  was  not  accidental  that  the  movement  of 
the  French  workers  for  emancipation  empha- 
sized a  desire  for  control  of  industry.  The  syn- 
dicalism of  France  has  expressed  the  workers' 
interest  in  production  as  the  labor  movements 
of  other  countries  have  laid  stress  exclusively 
on  its  economic  value  to  them.  The  syndical- 
ists' theory  takes  for  granted  the  readiness  of 
workers  to  assume  responsibility  for  produc- 
tion, while  the  trade  unionists  of  England,  Ger- 
many and  the  United  States  ask  for  a  voice 
in  determining  not  their  productive  but  their 
financial  relation  to  it. 


PRODUCTION— CEEATIVE  EFFORT  11 

It  is  the  habit  of  these  other  peoples  to  credit 
the  lack  of  interest  in  work  to  physical  hard- 
ships which  the  wage  system  has  imposed.  But 
the  wage  system  from  the  point  of  view  of 
material  welfare  has  borne  no  less  heavily  on 
the  French  than  on  other  workers.  It  is  also 
difficult  to  prove  that  the  physical  hardships 
of  modern  methods  of  production  are  greater 
than  the  hardships  of  earlier  methods.  The 
truth  is  that  neither  hardships  nor  exploitation 
of  labor  are  new  factors;  they  have  both, 
through  long  centuries,  repressed  in  varying 
degree  the  inspirational  and  intellectual  in- 
terest of  workers  in  productive  effort.  It  is 
not  the  economic  burdens  which  followed  the 
introduction  of  machinery  and  the  division  of 
labor  that  distinguish  these  new  factors  in  in- 
dustry, but  the  discredit  which  they  throw 
around  man's  labor  power.  They  have  carried 
the  discredit  of  labor  in  its  social  position  fur- 
ther than  it  had  been  carried,  but  this  is  merely 
a  by-product  of  the  discredit  they  cast  on  the 
skill  and  intellectual  power  which  is  latent  in 
the  working  class.  In  this  connection  the  sig- 
nificant truth  for  civilization  is  that  while  ex- 
ploitation of  labor  and  physical  hardships  in- 
duce the  antagonism  between  labor  and  capital, 


12  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

modern  factory  organization  destroys  creative 
desire  and  individual  initiative  as  it  excludes 
the  workers  from  participation  in  creative  ex- 
perience. 

The  new  discoveries  in  inorganic  power  and 
their  application  to  industrial  enterprise  are 
possibly  more  far  reaching  in  their  effect  on  the 
adjustment  and  relationships  of  men  than  they 
have  been  at  any  other  time  in  the  last  century 
and  a  half.  Whatever  the  world  owes  to  these 
discoveries  and  their  applications  it  cannot  af- 
ford to  lose  sight  of  a  fact  of  great  social  sig- 
nificance, which  is,  that  people  have  accepted 
mechanical  achievements,  not  as  labor  saving 
devices  but  as  substitutes  for  human  initiative 
and  effort.  They  have  not,  indeed,  saved  labor 
to  the  advantage  of  labor  itself,  and  they  have 
inhibited  interest  in  production.  Outside  of 
business  enterprise  and  diplomacy — the  politi- 
cal extension  of  business — mechanical  devices 
have  lost  the  surprise  reaction  and  resentment 
which  they  originally  set  up.  As  a  competitor 
with  human  labor  they  have  established  them- 
selves as  its  fit  survivor.  The  prophesy  of  Theo- 
phrastus  Such  seems  to  have  been  already  ful- 
filled, and  any  new  machine  added  to  those  al- 
ready in  power  in  the  Parliament  of  Machines 


PRODUCTION— CEEATIVE  EFFORT    13 

can  scarcely  add  to  the  worker's  sense  of  his 
own  impotency.  The  business  valuations  which 
were  evolved  out  of  craftsmanship  and  which 
were  further  developed  under  the  influence  of 
the  technology  of  the  last  century  and  a  half, 
emphasized  the  value  of  material  force,  and  re- 
pressed spiritual  evaluations,  such  as  the  crea- 
tive impulse  in  human  beings.  v 

Modern  industrial  institutions  are  developed  \\ 
by  an  exclusive  cultivation  of  people's  needs  \\ 
and  the  desire  to  possess.  They  are  developed 
independently,  as  we  have  seen,  of  any  need  or 
desire  to  create.  The  desire  to  possess  is  re- 
sponsible for  the  production  of  a  mass  of  goods 
unprecedented  and  inconceivable  a  century  and 
a  half  ago.  The  actual  production  of  all  of  these 
goods  is  unrelated  to  the  motive  of  men's  par- 
ticipation in  their  production;  the  actual  pro- 
duction in  relation  to  the  motive  is  an  incident. 
The  sole  reason  for  the  participation  in  the 
productive  effort  is  not  the  desire  for  creative 
experience  or  the  satisfaction  of  the  creative 
impulse;  it  is  not  an  interest  in  supplying  the 
needs  of  a  community  or  in  the  enrichment  of 
life;  it  is  to  acquire  out  of  the  store  of  goods 
all  that  can  be  acquired  for  personal  possession 
or  consumption.  There  is  no  more  fundamental 


14  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

need  than  the  need  to  consume ;  but  for  the  com- 
mon run  of  men  as  a  motive  in  the  creation  of 
wealth,  it  is  shorn  of  adventure,  of  imagination 
and  of  joy. 

The  ownership  of  many  things,  which  mass 
production  has  made  possible,  the  intensive 
cultivation  of  the  desire  to  own,  has  added  an- 
other element  to  the  corruption  of  workmanship 
and  the  depreciation  of  its  value.  Access  to  a 
mass  of  goods  made  cheap  by  machinery  has 
had  its  contributing  influence  in  the  people's 
depreciation  of  their  own  creative  efforts.  As 
people  become  inured  to  machine  standards, 
they  lose  their  sense  of  art  values  along  with 
their  joy  in  creative  effort,  their  self  regard  as 
working  men  and  their  personal  equation  in  in- 
dustrial life. 

Where  the  motive  of  individuals  who  engage 
in  industry  is  the  desire  to  possess,  the  rational 
method  of  gaining  possession  is  not  by  the  ar- 
duous way  of  work  but  of  capture.  The  scheme 
of  capture  is  a  scheme  whereby  you  may  get 
something  for  (doing)  nothing;  nothing  as- 
nearly  as  possible  in  the  way  of  fabrication  of 
goods ;  something  for  the  manipulation  of  men ; 
something  for  the  development  of  technology 
and  mechanical  science;  and  high  regard  for 


PRODUCTION— CREATIVE  EFFORT    15 

the  manipulation  of  money.    "Doing  nothing" 
does  not  mean  that  manual  workers,  managers 
of  productive  enterprises,  speculators  in  the 
natural  resources  of  wealth  production   and 
manufactured  goods,  as  well  as  financiers,  are 
not  busy  people,  or  that  their  activity  does  not 
result  in  accomplishment.    They  are  indeed  the 
busy  people  and  their  accomplishment  is  the 
world's  wealth.    Nevertheless  the  intention  of 
all  and  the  spirit  of  the  scheme  is  to  do  as  near 
nothing  as  possible  in  exchange  for  the  highest 
return.     The  whole  industrial  arrangement  is  \ 
carried  on  without  the  force  of  productive  m-  f 
tention;  it  is  carried  forward  against  a  disin^ 
clination  to  produce. 

I  have  said  that  industry  was  shorn  of  ad- 
venture for  the  common  man.  Adventure  in 
industrial  enterprise  is  the  business  man's 
great  monopoly.  His  impetus  is  not  due  to  his 
desire  to  create  wealth  but  to  exploit  it,  and 
he  secures  its  creation  by  "paying  men  off." 
Commonly  he  is  peevishly  expectant  that  those 
he  pays  off  will  have  a  creative  intention  toward 
the  work  he  pays  them  to  do,  although  in  the 
scheme  of  industry  which  he  supports  the  op- 
portunity provided  for  such  intention  is  neg- 
ligible. An  efficiency  engineer  estimated  that 


16  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

there  is  a  loss  in  wealth  of  some  fifty  per  cent, 
due  to  the  inability  of  the  business  man  to  ap- 
praise the  creative  possibilities  in  industry. 

When  exploitation  of  wealth  is  referred  to, 
those  who  own  it  are  generally  meant.  But 
exploitation  of  wealth  is  the  intention  of  the 
worker  as  well  as  of  the  business  man.  To  get, 
as  I  have  said,  something  for  (doing)  nothing 
is  the  dominating  motif  in  the  industrial  world. 
It  is  supposed  to  reflect  the  self-interest  of  in- 
dividuals, to  reflect,  that  is,  their  economic 
needs. 

This  motive  of  circumscribed  self-interest 
during  an  era  of  political  and  industrial  ex- 
pansion has  been  adopted  by  philosophers  as 
the  guide  as  well  as  a  clue  to  conduct;  it  was 
hailed  by  them  as  a  sufficient  and  complete  mo- 
tivation for  wealth  creation;  they  used  it  as  a 
basis  of  a  theory  for  race  progress  resting 
solely  on  the  efforts  of  men  to  satisfy  their 
material  needs  through  their  ability  to  capture 
goods.  This  motive  together  with  the  possi- 
bilities which  machine  production  opened  up  for 
wealth  exploitation,  gave  birth  to  the  dismal 
science  of  Political  Economy;  it  suggested  the 
materialistic  interpretation  of  history,  and 
brought  to  earth  Utopian  schemes  of  brother- 


PRODUCTION— CREATIVE  EFFORT    17 

hood.  Political  science  is  dismal  because  it  is 
an  interpretation  of  dismal  institutions.  It  may 
be  ungenerous  to  speak  slightingly  of  institu- 
tions which  have  yielded  such  great  wealth, 
which  have  transformed  inert  matter  into  pro- 
ductive power  and  brought  in  consequence  the 
whole  world  into  acquaintanceship  and  rivalry. 
It  would  be  ungenerous  if  it  were  not  for  a  fact 
which  has  become  poignant,  that  the  exploita- 
tion of  wealth  and  undigested  relationships  are 
to-day  the  outstanding  menace  to  civilization. 
The  present  world  conflict  has  made  it  clear 
that  relationships  cannot  remain  undigested; 
that  they  are  not  in  their  nature  passive.  They 
are  either  integrating  in  their  force  or  disin- 
tegrating. Socialism  has  undertaken  for  two 
generations  to  prove  that  exploitation  carries 
with  it  its  own  seeds  of  destruction.  The  posi- 
tion of  the  socialists  is  passing  out  of  theory 
and  propaganda  through  the  hands  of  diploma- 
tists, into  statutes.  Both  the  socialists  and 
their  successors  would  eradicate  exploitation  by 
repressing  it.  The  socialists  would  repress  it 
by  shifting  ownership  of  wealth  from  individ- 
uals to  the  state,  while  the  diplomatists,  through 
the  same  agency,  would  regulate  those  who  own 
it. 


18  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

It  is  an  historical  fact  as  well  as  a  psycho- 
logical one  that  you  do  not  get  rid  of  traits  or 
institutions  except  as  you  replace  them  with 
something  of  positive  service,  or  greater  com- 
petitive value.  The  institution  of  capitalism 
exists  not  because  of  its  predatory  character, 
but  because  in  spite  of  its  exploitation  it  pro- 
motes industry,  and  labor  and  other  industrial 
technicians  do  not.  As  our  industrial  institu- 
tions have  grown  out  of  a  predatory  concept  in- 
stead of  a  creative  one,  as  capture  has  been  re- 
warded rather  than  work,  as  the  possessive  de- 
sire has  been  stimulated  and  the  creative  desire 
has  been  sacrificed,  as  employers  of  men  and 
owners  of  machines  have  engaged  in  production 
because  of  their  interest  not  in  the  process  or 
in  the  use  of  the  product,  but  in  the  reward,  as 
wage  workers  have  hired  out  for  the  day's 
work  or  continued  during  their  adult  life  in 
their  trade  without  interest  in  its  development, 
because  like  their  employers  they  wanted  the 
highest  cash  return,  wealth  exploitation  has 
come  to  be  synonymous  in  the  minds  of  men 
with  wealth  creation.  A  creative  concept  which 
could  survive  and  inhibit  the  predatory  concept 
must  rest  on  such  elements  of  creative  force  as 
are  now  absent  from  our  industrial  institution. 


PRODUCTION— CREATIVE  EFFORT    19 

It  is  almost  axiomatic  to  say  that  a  system  of 
wealth  production  which  cultivated  creative 
effort  would  yield  more  in  general  terms  of  life 
as  well  as  in  terms  of  goods,  than  a  system  like 
our  own  which  exploits  creative  power.  It  is 
obvious  that  the  disintegrating  tendency  in  our 
system  is  due  to  the  fact  that  production  is  de- 
pendent for  its  motive  force  on  the  desire  to 
possess.  It  is  also  obvious  that  a  rational  sys- 
tem of  industry  which  sought  to  give  that  de- 
sire among  all  men  full  opportunity  for  satis- 
faction would  also  undertake  to  cultivate  the 
creative  impulse  for  the  sake  of  increasing  crea- 
tive effort  The  result  would  be  an  increase  in 
production.  As  logical  as  this  observation  may 
be,  it  is  not  so  obvious  how  such  a  social  trans- 
formation as  this  implies,  may  be  effected. 

Every  advance  in  wealth  creation  which  has 
become  an  institutional  part  of  an  economic 
system  has  been  impelled  and  sustained  by  the 
material  interests  of  people  who  at  the  time 
held  the  strategic  position  in  the  community. 
The  world  has  progressed,  or  retrogressed,  as 
the  most  powerful  interests  at  any  time  adjust- 
ed the  institutions  and  customs  governing 
wealth  production  to  their  own  advantage.  As 
the  controlling  interests  in  our  present  scheme 


20  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

are  the  business  interests,  it  is  the  business  man, 
not  the  workman,  who  directs  industry  and  de- 
termines its  policy  as  well  as  the  general  policy 
of  the  nation  in  which  it  operates.  It  is  to  the 
advantage  of  private  business  run  for  private 
gain,  to  control  creative  effort  for  the  purpose 
of  appropriating  the  product,  and  to  inhibit 
free  creative  expression  as  an  uncontrollable 
factor  in  the  enterprise  of  exploitation. 

The  appalling  and  wanton  sacrifice  of  life 
which  are  incident  to  the  evolution  of  machin- 
ery and  the  division  of  labor  seem  to  demand  at 
times  their  elimination.  In  weariness  we  are 
urged  to  retrace  our  steps  and  go  back  to 
craftsmanship  and  the  Guilds.  But  it  is  idle  to 
talk  about  going  back  or  eliminating  institu- 
tionalized features  of  society.  We  cannot  go 
back,  we  have  not  the  ability  to  discard  this  or 
that  part  of  our  environment  except  as  we  make 
it  over.  The  result  of  this  making  over  might 
be  vitalized  by  methods  which  had  belonged  to 
earlier  periods,  but  neither  the  methods  nor  the 
periods,  we  can  safely  say ,  will  live  again. 
Neither  our  own  nor  future  generations  will 
escape  the  influence  of  modern  technology.  It 
will  play  its  part.  It  may  be  a  part  which  will 
lead  away  from  some  of  the  destructive  influ- 


PROBUCTItN— CEEATIVE  EFFORT    21 

ences  which  developed  in  the  era  of  craftsman- 
ship and  which  dominate  the  present.  But  a 
society  too  enfeebled  to  use  its  own  experience 
will  not  have  the  power  to  use  the  experience  of 
another  people  or  of  another  time.  It  is  beside 
the  point  to  look  to  some  other  experience  or 
scheme  of  life  and  choose  that  because  it  seems 
good,  unless  the  choice  is  based  on  a  people's 
present  fitness  to  adapt  that  other  experience 
or  other  scheme  of  life  to  their  own  experience. 
The  proposition  to  revert  to  an  earlier  period 
suggests  nothing  more  than  the  repetition  of 
an  experience  out  of  which  the  present  state  of 
affairs  has  evolved. 

Nor  is  there  ground  for  the  hope  that  in  time 
institutions  and  relationships  will  be  regulated 
on  principles  of  altruism.  It  is  not  apparent' 
indeed  that  such  regulations  would  yield  even 
the  present  allowance  of  happiness  incident  to 
our  own  immature  method  of  capturing  what 
wealth  we  can  without  relation  to  social  factors. 
As  unfortunate  as  we  are  in  pursuit  of  that 
blind  method,  it  is  safe  to  predict  that  the  world 
would  be  a  madder  place  than  it  is  to-day  if 
every  one  devoted  himself  to  doing  what  he  be- 
lieved was  for  the  good  of  everybody  else. 

The  hope  of  social  revolutionists  that  private 


22  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

business  would  overreach  itself  and  defeat  its 
own  purpose,  grew  out  of  the  expectation  that 
its  tribute  exactions  would  draw  the  subjects 
of  capital  together  in  a  common  defensive  move- 
ment; that  the  movement  on  account  of  its  num- 
bers would  overturn  business  and  that  in  place 
of  private  management  democratic  control 
would  be  instituted.  Some  such  outcome,  sooner 
or  later,  seems  inevitable  if  civilization  is 
scheduled  to  advance.  The  labor  union  move- 
ment, unlike  the  political  socialist  revolutionary 
movement,  undertakes  in  its  operation  to  supply 
labor  with  a  certain  working  content,  which  the 
administrative  scheme  of  industry  has  excluded 
from  the  experience  of  its  workers.  But  this 
content  is  not  sufficient  to  stimulate  the  imagi- 
nation of  the  trade  unionists  with  the  thought 
that  the  world  of  industry  is  the  field  of  creative 
adventure.  Their  conception  born  of  experi- 
ence is  not  so  flattering.  It  would  be  a  brave 
man  who  would  undertake  to  convince  the  twen- 
tieth century  adult  wage  earner,  involved  in 
modern  methods  of  machine  production,  that 
his  poverty  is  less  in  his  possession  of  wealth 
than  in  his  growth  and  in  his  creative  oppor- 
tunity. 

The  industrial  changes  which  the  labor  move- 


PRODUCTION— CREATIVE  EFFORT  23 

ment  proposes  to  make  are  on  the  side  of  a  bet- 
ter distribution  of  goods.  A  better  distribution 
would  have  a  dynamic  significance  in  wealth 
production,  if  the  actual  increase  which  labor 
secured  in  wages  and  leisure  were  a  real  in- 
crease. But  exploiting  capital  provides  for 
such  exigencies  as  high  wages  by  increasing  the 
price  of  products,  thus  reducing  the  wage  earn- 
ers '  purchasing  power  to  the  former  level.  High 
wages  fail  to  disturb  the  relative  position  of 
capital  and  labor  even  more  than  they  fail  to 
affect  the  purchasing  power  of  the  worker. 

It  is  often  suggested  that  if  the  state  assumed 
control  of  industry  the  blight  of  business  could 
be  removed.  But  in  the  transfer  we  would  not 
necessarily  gain  opportunity  to  enjoy  the  adven- 
ture which  industry  holds  out.  Industry  as  a 
creative  experience,  it  is  safe  to  predict,  would 
be  as  rare  a  personal  experience  and  as  foreign 
an  influence  in  social  existence  under  state  man- 
agement as  it  is  under  business  management. 
The  state  would  curb  the  amount  of  wealth  ex- 
ploitation possibly,  but  would  not  alter  the  uni- 
versal attitude  toward  wealth  production,  which 
is  to  take  as  much  and  give  as  little  as  one  can 
get  off  with. 

Although  political  socialism  may  be  the  eco- 


24  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

nomic  sequel  of  private  capital  there  is  no  foun- 
dation for  the  belief  that  it  will  of  itself  induce 
creative  effort  or  stimulate  creative  impulse. 
The  faith  back  of  the  socialist  movement  that 
desirable  attributes  like  the  creative  impulse, 
which  men  potentially  possess,  will  begin  to 
operate  automatically  and  universally  as  soon 
as  there  is  sufficient  leisure  and  food  for  gen- 
eral consumption,  is  blind  and  historically  un- 
warranted. The  signs  are  that  a  socialist  state 
would  lean  exclusively  on  the  consumption  de- 
sire for  production  results,  just  as  the  present 
system  of  business  now  does.  Neither  fat  in- 
comes nor  large  leisure  have  furnished  the 
world  with  its  people  of  genius.  In  spite  of  the 
inhibiting  influence  of  exploitation,  they  have 
come,  what  there  are  of  them,  out  of  intensive 
application  to  some  matter  of  moment.  Pos- 
sibly they  would  come,  and  more  of  them,  from 
the  work-a-day  world  under  socialism  with  the 
inhibiting  influence  of  organized  exploitation 
removed,  but  more  of  them  would  not  insure  a 
democracy  in  industry  or  elsewhere.  Nothing 
insures  that  short  of  a  strong  emotional  im- 
pulse, a  real  intellectual  interest  in  the  adven- 
ture of  productive  enterprise. 
The  creative  desire  is  an  incident  or  a  sort  of 


PRODUCTION— CREATIVE  EFFORT    25 

•• 
by-product  of  the  economics  of  socialism  as  it  is 

of  classical  economics ;  neither  one  nor  the  other 
depends  on  its  cultivation.  Either  is  capable 
of  achieving  mass  production,  but  neither  in- 
sures a  democratic  control  of  industry,  neither 
provides  for  growth,  for  education  in  the  pro- 
ductive process.  A  democracy  of  industry  re- 
quires a  people's  sustained  interest  in  the  pro- 
ductive enterprise;  their  interest  in  the  de- 
velopment of  technology,  the  development  of 
markets,  and  the  release  of  man's  productive 
energy. 

It  happens  that  in  machine  production  and  in 
the  division  of  labor  there  are  emotional  and 
intellectual  possibilities  which  were  non-existent 
in  the  earlier  and  simpler  methods  of  produc- 
tion. As  power  latent  in  inorganic  matter  has 
been  freed  and  applied  to  common  needs,  an  en- 
vironment has  been  evolved,  filled  with  situa- 
tions incomparably  more  dramatic  than  the  pro- 
vincial affairs  of  detached  people  and  communi- 
ties. Although  this  technological  subject  mat- 
ter, rich  in  opportunities  for  associated  adven- 
ture and  infinite  discovery,  is  not  a  part  of  com- 
mon experience,  it  exists,  and  if  called  out  from 
its  isolation  for  purposes  of  common  experi- 
mentation, it  is  fit  matter  for  making  science  a 


26  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

vital  experience  in  the  productive  life  of  the 
worker. 

Industry  under  the  direction  of  business  will 
not  open  up  the  adventure  with  its  stimulating 
factors  to  its  subservient  labor  force,  unless  it 
happens  that  the  present  methods  fail,  in  time, 
to  carry  forward  industrial  enterprise  on  a 
profit-making  basis;  or  unless  labor  develops 
the  power  which  springs  from  desire  for  crea- 
tive experience,  to  undertake  the  direction  and 
control  of  industry. 

The  present  is  better  than  any  time  earlier  in 
the  history  of  technology  for  the  development 
of  a  concept  of  industry  as  a  socially  creative 
enterprise.  As  craftsmanship  extended  and  in- 
tensified an  interest  in  personal  ownership,  it 
magnified  the  value  of  possessions ;  as  it  deep- 
ened the  desire  for  protection  of  private  prop- 
erty and  the  strengthening  of  property  laws 
against  human  laws,  it  was  not  a  socializing 
force.  While  the  craftsmanship  period  strength- 
ened personal  claims  on  workmanship  and  in- 
terest in  it,  mechanical  power  and  division  of 
labor  have  impersonalized  industry.*  In  the 
labyrinth  of  mechanical  processes  and  economic 
calculation  it  is  not  to-day  possible  for  a  worker 

*  Thorstein  Veblen — Instinct  of  Workmanship,  Chapter  V. 


PRODUCTION— CREATIVE  EFFORT  27 

to  think  or  speak  of  a  product  as  his.  He  has 
no  basis  for  ownership  claims  in  any  article; 
even  the  price  is  arranged  between  buyer  and 
seller  and  he  is  not  the  seller.  An  article  owes 
its  existence  to  an  infinite  number  of  persons 
and  its  place  in  the  market  .to  as  many  more. 

A  worker's  claim  to  the  product  of  his  la- 
bor is  merged  in  an  infinity  of  claims  which 
makes  the  product  more  nearly  the  property  of 
society  than  of  any  one  individual.  And  this 
merging  of  claims  which  has  resulted  in  the  sub- 
merging of  all  wage  workers,  has  set  up  the 
new  educational  task  of  discovering  the  possi- 
bilities for  creative  experience  in  associated  en- 
terprise. 

While  an  article  manufactured  under  busi- 
ness conditions  is  the  product  of  enforced  asso- 
ciation, we  have  in  this  condition  the  mechanics 
of  a  real  association.  As  it  now  stands,  the  as- 
sociation is  one  of  individuals,  with  the  impulse 
for  association  and  for  creative  effort  left  out. 
The  interests  of  some  ninety  workers  associated 
together  in  the  making  of  a  shoe  are  not  com- 
mon but  antagonistic,  except  as  they  are  com- 
mon in  their  antagonism  to  the  owner  of  the 
shoe  on  which  they  work.  They  hang  together 


28  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTEY 

because  they  must;  their  parting  is  the  best 
part  of  a  working  day. 

And  yet  the  practice  of  dividing  up  the  fabri- 
cation of  an  article  among  the  members  of  a 
group  instead  of  confining  the  making  of  it  to 
one  or  two  people,  opens  up  the  possibility  of 
extensive  social  intercourse,  and  has  the  power, 
we  may  discover,  to  sublimate  the  inordinate 
desire  for  the  intensive  satisfaction  of  personal 
life.  Although  the  division  of  lab«>r  has  given 
us  a  society  which  is  abortive  in  its  functioning 
like  a  machine  with  half  assembled  parts, -it 
offers  us  the  mechanics  for  interdependence 
and  the  opportunity  to  work  out  a  coordinated 
industrial  life. 


CHAPTER  II 

ADAPTING    PEOPLtE    TO    INDUSTRY — THE    AMERICAN 

WAY 

As  machine  power  rivalled  hand  work,  pro- 
moters of  industry  until  recently  relied  for  its 
advancement  on  the  perfection  of  technology, 
giving  little  thought  to  the  perfection  of  labor. 
It  was  confidently  assumed  that  labor,  out  of 
its  own  necessities,  would  adapt  itself  automati- 
cally to  the  new  requirements  of  the  machine, 
and  to  the  shifts  of  business  interest.  When  it 
was  discovered  that  there  were  limitations  to 
labor's  voluntary  adaptation  under  the  condi- 
tions laid  down,  intelligent  business  in  America 
decided  that  the  responsibility  for  realizing  la- 
bor's adaptation  or  " labor's  cooperation"  as 
they  call  it,  must  be  assumed  by  the  management 
of  industry  and  that  that-management  must  be 
scientifically  worked  out  and  applied. 

Scientific  management  is  scientific  as  it  sub- 
jects the  labor  operations  on  each  job,  each  spe- 
cific job  to  be  performed  in  a  factory,  to  a  test- 

29 


30  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

ing  out  of  the  energy  consumed ;  to  discovering 
how  to  secure  labor's  maximum  productivity 
without  waste  of  time  or  energy.  It  is  scientific  as 
the  manager's  state  of  mind  towards  the  physi- 
cal and  psychological  reactions  of  the  work- 
ers is  one  of  inquiry  and  a  readiness  to  accept, 
as  facts  of  mechanical  science  are  accepted,  the 
reaction  of  the  workers.  A  scientific  manager,  or 
engineer  as  he  is  often  called,  bears  the  same 
relation  to  the  labor  force  in  a  factory  that  an 
electrical  engineer  bears  to  the  electrical  equip- 
ment. If  his  attention  to  the  emotional  reaction 
of  the  workers  is  less  detached  than  scientific 
standards  require,  it  must  be  remembered  that 
he  is  trying  to  make  adjustments  which  must 
first  of  all  meet  definite  business  conditions. 
Where  the  reactions  of  the  workers  interfere 
with  the  whole  scheme  of  business  administra- 
tion (and  interfere  they  ceaselessly  do),  he  has 
to  substitute  measures  which  are  not  strictly 
speaking  scientific.  On  these  occasions  he 
adopts  humanitarian  schemes,  which  are  gen- 
erally spoken  of  as  welfare  work.  It  is  the 
introduction  of  these  schemes  which  look  like 
a  "slop  over"  from  science  to  charity,  that 
makes  it  difficult  for  outsiders  to  tell  just  what 
scientific  management  is  and  what  it  is  not. 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  31 

Mr.  Frederick  W.  Taylor,  the  founder  of 
scientific  management,  was  capable  of  scientific 
detachment  in  studying  working  men  in  relation 
to  the  specific  job.  He  was  able  more  notably 
than  others  had  been  before  him,  and  more  than 
many  who  have  followed  him,  to  extend  the  im- 
personal state  of  mind,  which  he  enjoyed  in  the 
study  of  inorganic  energy,  to  his  study  of  hu- 
man energy.  Mr.  Taylor's  interest  did  not 
emanate  from  sympathy  with  labor  in  its  hard- 
ships ;  his  interest  was  centered  in  an  effort  to 
conserve  and  apply  labor  energy  with  maximum 
economy  for  wealth  production.  Mr.  Taylor 
awakened  the  consciousness  of  industrial  man- 
agers to  the  fact  that  the  energy  of  workers  like 
the  power  of  machinery  is  subject  to  laws.  He 
demonstrated  that  it  was  possible  in  specific 
operations  to  discover  how  the  highest  degree 
of  energy  could  be  attained  and  the  largest 
output  result,  without  loss  through  fatigue. 
He  showed  how  efficiency  could  be  enhanced  by 
transferring  the  responsibility  of  standards  of 
work  from  the  workers  to  the  managers.  He 
formulated,  as  a  business  and  industry  doctrine, 
that  a  definite  relation  between  the  expendi- 
ture of  labor  energy  and  the  labor  reward  could 
be  established;  that  the  wage  incentive,  if  ap- 


32  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

plied  to  labor  in  relation  to  energy  expended, 
would  yield,  or  might  be  expected  to  yield  in- 
creased returns.  These  incentives,  rewards, 
stimuli,  which  employers  could  apply  would 
produce,  he  stated  with  unscientific  fervor,  the 
workers'  initiative.  The  inability  of  Mr.  Tay- 
lor and  other  scientific  managers  to  distinguish 
between  initiative  and  short  lived  reaction  to 
stimulus  is  simple  evidence  that  their  scientific 
experiments  were  confined  to  comparisons 
which  they  could  make  between  a  yield  in  wealth 
where  the  stimulus  to  labor  is  weak,  and  a  yield 
where  it  is  strong.  They  will  not  discover  what 
a  worker's  productivity  is,  or  might  be,  when 
incited  by  his  impulse  to  work,  nor  will  they 
secure  labor's  initiative,  until  they  release  the 
factors,  latent  in  industry,  which  have  inspira- 
tional, creative  force. 

The  attitude  of  Mr.  Taylor  and  his  follow- 
ers, however,  differs  from  that  of  the  ordinary 
manager  who  maintains  an  irritated  disregard 
of  the  disturbing  elements  instead  of  accepting 
them  and,  as  far  as  is  consistent  with  business 
principles,  allaying  or  cajoling  them.  The  sig- 
nificant contributions  which  scientific  manage- 
ment has  made  are  in  line  with  the  experiments 
originally  introduced  by  Mr.  Taylor.  They  call 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  33 

for  the  study  of  each  new  task  by  the  manage- 
ment, for  discovering  the  economy  in  the  expen- 
diture of  labor  energy  before  it  is  submitted  to 
the  working  force ;  the  standardizing  of  the  task 
in  conformity  with  the  findings ;  the  teaching  of 
the  approved  methods  to  the  working  force; 
the  introduction  of  incentives  which  will  insure 
the  full  response  of  labor  in  the  accomplishment 
of  the  task.  Beside  the  standardizing  of  tasks 
and  the  relating  the  wage  to  the  fixed  standard, 
scientific  management  has  made  intensive  ex- 
periments in  the  scheduling  of  the  various  oper- 
ations to  be  performed,  which  are  divided 
among  the  working  force,  so  that  no  one  opera- 
tion is  held  up  awaiting  the  completion  of  an- 
other. It  has  shown  in  this  connection  that 
work  can  be  "routed"  so  that  the  time  of  work- 
ers is  not  lost.  The  most  successfully  managed 
factories  also  plan  their  annual  product  so  that 
employment  will  be  continuous.  They  have  dis- 
covered that  the  periods  of  unemployment  se- 
riously affect  the  personnel  of  a  labor  force  and 
they  estimate  that  the  turnover  of  the  labor 
force  which  requires  the  constant  breaking  in 
of  new  men  is  an  item  of  serious  financial  loss. 
The  Ford  Automobile  Works  at  one  time  hired 
50,000  men  in  one  year  while  not  employing  at 


34  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTEY 

any  one  time  more  than  14,000.  They  estimated 
that  the  cost  of  breaking  in  a  new  man  averaged 
$70.00.  To  reduce  this  cost,  they  instituted 
profit  sharing,  as  an  incentive  for  men  to  re- 
main. Other  factories  have  estimated  the  cost 
of  replacing  men  from  $50.00  to  $200.00.  A  rub- 
ber concern  in  Ohio  has  a  labor  turnover  of  150 
per  cent.  In  connection  with  the  effort  to'  re- 
duce the  turnover  in  the  labor  force  the  man- 
agement of  well  organized  factories  takes  great 
care  to  estimate  a  worker 's  value  before  em- 
ploying him.  The  policy  of  transferring  a  man 
from  one  department  to  another  where  he  is 
better  suited  yields  evidently  valuable  results. 
In  factories  where  there  is  effort  to  hold  labor, 
to  make  employment  continuous,  the  turnover 
has  been  reduced  in  some  cases  to  as  low  as  18 
per  cent.  Generally,  however,  it  is  still  high; 
frequently  as  high  as  50  per  cent,  and  50  per 
cent  is  still  considered  low,  even  in  factories 
which  have  given  the  subject  much  considera- 
tion. 

There  is  a  tendency  in  developing  the  mechan- 
ics of  efficiency,  as  they  relate  to  labor,  to  es- 
tablish for  machine  production  standards  of 
workmanship.  Long  and  weary  experience  has 
proved  that  wage  earners  under  factory  meth- 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  35 

ods  and  machine  conditions  are  not  interested 
in  maintaining  standards  of  work.  The  stand- 
ards which  are  set  by  the  scientific  manage- 
ment schemes  of  efficiency  are  not,  to  be  sure, 
the  qualitative  standards  of  craftsmanship  but 
they  are  qualitative  as  well  as  quantitative 
standards  of  machine  work.  The  tendency  to 
establish  standards  should  have  educational 
significance  for  workers.  It  would  have,  if  the 
responsibility  for  setting  standards  as  well  as 
maintaining  them  rested  in  any  measure  with 
the  workers ;  it  would  have,  that  is,  if  the  work- 
ers had  the  interest  in  workmanship,  which 
as  things  now  stand  they  have  not.  The  point 
in  scientific  management  is  that  efficiency  de- 
pends, wholly  depends  they  believe,  on  central- 
izing the  responsibility  for  setting  and  main- 
taining workmanship  standards,  on  transfer- 
ring the  responsibility  for  standards  of  work 
from  workers  who  do  it,  to  the  management 
who  directs  it  done.  I  have  learned  of  only  one 
manager  who  realizes  that  although  the  factory 
workers  are  not  to  be  trusted  to  maintain  stand- 
ards, a  management  nevertheless  will  fail  to 
get  the  workers'  full  cooperation  until  it 
arouses  their  interest  in  maintaining  them. 
The  manager  is  Mr.  Robert  Wolf,  who  illus- 


36  CEEATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

trated  this  point  at  a  meeting  of  the  Taylor  So- 
ciety in  March,  1917.  In  describing  the  process 
of  extracting  the  last  possible  amount  of  water 
from  paper  pulp,  he  said : 

"Our  problem  was  to  determine  the  best  length  of 
time  to  keep  the  low  pressure  on,  as  the  high  pressure 
is  governed  entirely  by  the  production  coming  from 
the  wet  machine.  After  having  determined  that  three 
minutes  of  low  pressure  .  .  .  gives  maximum  mois- 
ture test,  we  furnished  each  man  on  the  wet  machines 
with  a  clock  and  asked  him  to  leave  this  low  pressure 
on  just  three  minutes.  As  long  as  the  foremen  kept 
constantly  after  their  men  and  vigilantly  followed 
them  up  we  obtained  some  slight  increase  in  the  test ; 
but  it  required  a  constant  urging  upon  our  part  to 
focus  the  attention  of  the  men  upon  this  three  minute 
time  of  low  pressure.  .  .  .  We  realized  finally  that  in 
order  to  get  the  results  we  were  after,  it  was  neces- 
sary for  us  to  produce  a  desire  upon  the  part  of  our 
men  to  do  this  work  in  the  proper  way  ...  so  we 
designed  an  instrument  which  would  give  us  a  record 
of  the  tune  lost  between  pressing  operations,  also  the 
number  of  minutes  the  low  pressure  was  kept  on.  It 
took  us  something  over  a  year  to  perfect  this  machine, 
but  after  it  was  finally  perfected  and  a  record  of  the 
operations  made,  we  found  that  the  men  actually  were 
operating  at  an  average  efficiency  of  42  per  cent,  and 
our  moisture  test  was  running  about  54  per  cent. 
Our  next  step  was  to  post  a  daily  record  of  the  rel- 
ative standing  of  the  men  in  the  machine  room,  put- 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  37 

ting  the  men  who  had  the  best  record  at  the  top  of 
the  list,  in  the  order  of  their  weekly  average  efficien- 
cies. (The  efficiency  of  low  pressure,  which  proved  to 
be  the  most  important  factor,  was  computed  by  calling 
three  minutes  of  low  pressure  100  per  cent  and  two 
minutes  either  way  0  per  cent.)  As  a  result  of  simply 
posting  this  record  our  efficiencies  rose  to  over  60  per 
cent  and  our  moisture  test  increased  a  little  less  than 
1  per  cent.  Some  of  the  best  and  most  skilled  men 
had  an  efficiency  of  over  80  per  cent,  but  quite  a  large 
percentage  of  them  were  down  below  50  per  cent.  We 
therefore  decided  that  it  was  necessary  to  have  the 
foreman  give  more  detailed  information  to  the  men  as 
to  what  the  machine  meant  and  how  their  efficiencies 
were  obtained  and  to  put  the  instrument  which  did 
the  recording  into  a  glass  case  in  the  machine  room 
where  all  the  men  could  see  it.  Each  foreman  took  a 
portion  of  the  chart  and  one  of  the  celluloid  scales  by 
which  we  obtained  the  efficiencies  and  explained  in 
detail  to  each  one  of  the  men  how  their  records  were 
calculated.  As  a  result  of  this,  our  efficiency  rose  from 
60  per  cent  to  80  per  cent  in  less  than  four  weeks,  and 
it  has  remained  at  80  per  cent  ever  since — (ever  since 
being  over  two  years) — enabling  us  to  get  a  moisture 
of  over  56  per  cent. ' '  * 

This  was  accomplished,  Mr.  Wolf  told  them, 
without  resorting  to  piece  work  or  bonus  or  any 
of  the  special  methods  of  payments,  their  men 
being  hired  by  the  day  throughout  the  entire 

*  Bulletin  of  the  Taylor  Society— March,  1917. 


38  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTEY 

plant.  Mr.  Wolf  accomplished  the  result  by 
giving  meaning  to  a  meaningless  task,  by  let- 
ting the  men  see  for  themselves  how  they  ar- 
rived at  results,  letting  them  see  the  different 
processes  of  getting  results  and  knowing  on 
their  own  account  which  were  the  most  valuable. 
There  may  be  other  managers  who  appreciate 
the  value  of  letting  men  in  on  the  experimental 
effort  of  getting  results  but  it  is  not  the  practice 
to  do  so  and  it  is  opposed  to  the  idea  of  trans- 
ferring the  responsibility  from  the  workshop 
to  the  manager's  office  or  laboratory.  Because 
of  this  practice  the  educational  value  of  estab- 
lishing standards  of  workmanship  is  lost  so  far 
as  the  workers  are  concerned.  Mr.  Wolf's  criti- 
cism of  orthodox  scientific  management  and  his 
conclusions  are  illuminating;  they  are  indeed 
revolutionary  in  nature  as  they  come  from  a 
manager  of  a  successful  industrial  enterprise: 

"Our  efforts,  ever  since  we  began  to  realize  the 
workman's  point  of  view,  have  been  not  to  take  re- 
sponsibility from  him.  It  is  our  plan  to  increase  his 
responsibility  and  we  feel  that  it  is  our  duty  to  teach 
him  to  exercise  his  reasoning  power  and  intelligence 
to  its  fullest  extent.  There  is  no  advantage  gained  l>y 
stimulating  a  man's  reasoning  power,  and  through  this 
means  his  creative  faculty,  if  the  management  relieves 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  39 

the  m<m  of  the  responsibility  for  each  individual  opera- 
tion. The  opportunity  for  self  expression,  which  is 
synonymous  with  joy  in  work,  is  something  that  the 
workman  is  entitled  to,  and  we  employers  who  feel  that 
management  is  to  become  a  true  science  must  begin  to 
think  less  of  the  science  of  material  things  and  think 
more  of  the  science  of  human  relationships.  Our  in- 
dustries must  become  humanized,  otherwise  there  will 
be  no  relief  from  the  present  state  of  unrest  in  the 
industries  of  the  world. 

' '  In  this  connection  it  might  be  well  to  observe  that 
our  experience  in  the  pulp  industry  has  been  that  in- 
structions which  go  too  much  into  detail  tend  to 
deaden  interest  in  the  work.  "We  realize  fully  the 
value  of  sufficient  instructions  to  get  uniform  results, 
but  we  try  to  leave  as  much  as  possible  to  the  judg- 
ment of  the  individual  operator,  making  our  instruc- 
tions take  more  the  form  of  constant  teaching  of  prin- 
ciples involved  in  the  operation  than  of  definite  fixed 
rules  of  procedure.  It  is  necessary  to  produce  a  de- 
sire in  the  heart  of  the  workman  to  do  good  work. 
No  amount  of  coercion  will  enlist  him  thoroughly  in 
the  service. 

' '  The  new  efficiency  is  going  to  reckon  a  great  deal 
more  with  the  needs  of  the  individual  man;  but  in 
order  to  do  this,  it  must  have  some  philosophical  con- 
ception of  the  reason  for  man's  existence.  It  is  begin- 
ning to  be  understood  that  when  we  deny  to  vast 
numbers  of  individuals  the  opportunity  to  do  creative 
work,  we  are  violating  a  great  universal  law." 

Scientific  management  is  sacrificing  educa- 


40  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

tioiial  opportunity  latent  in  the  realization  of 
workmanship  standards  in  the  same  way  that 
machinery  sacrificed  it.  They  both  curtail  the 
workers '  chance  to  discover  first-hand  what  the 
processes  of  fabrication  are,  the  processes  in 
which  they  are  involved ;  they  must  adopt  ready- 
made  methods  of  doing  their  work,  they  must 
accept  them  out  of  hand  without  questioning, 
or  chance  to  question,  their  validity.  Workers 
endowed  with  good  health  and  moral  vigor  re- 
sist these  attempts  to  put  something  over  on 
them,  irrespective  of  their  good  or  evil  re- 
sults. 

The  workers  have  resisted  machinery  not 
only  because  as  individuals  they  were  thrown 
out  of  jobs  for  a  time  or  lost  them  permanently, 
but  because  the  machine  imposed  on  them  a 
method  of  work,  of  activity  over  which  they 
had  no  control.  Scientific  management  has  un- 
dertaken to  gather  up  whatever  bits  of  initiative 
the  machine  had  not  already  taken  over  and  to 
hand  back  to  the  workers  at  the  bench  direc- 
tions for  them  to  follow  with  a  blind  ability  to 
accept  instruction.  It  is  incredible  to  factory 
managers  that  workers  object  to  being  taught 
"  right "  ways  of  doing  things.  Their  objection 
is  not  to  being  taught,  but  to  being  told  that 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  41 

some  one  way  is  right  without  having  had  the 
chance  to  know  why,  or  whether  indeed  it  is  the 
right  way.  This  resistance  to  being  taught,  it 
seems,  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  wayward 
desire  of  a  worker  to  do  his  own  way  because 
it  is  his  way,  and  of  course  from  the  managers ' 
point  of  view,  that  is  stupid.  It  is  stupid,  but 
the  stupidity  is  in  the  situation.  What  does 
this  waywardness  of  the  worker  to  do  his  own 
way  suggest?  Not  that  he  has  a  way  worth 
bothering  about  but  that  he  wants  to  exercise 
the  quality  which  all  industrial  managers  agree 
he  does  not  possess — his  initiative.  Now  a  man 
who  has  the  desire  to  exercise  initiative  and  does 
not  know  how  to  put  anything  through  is  not 
only  a  useless  person  in  society  but  the  most 
pestiferous  fellow  in  existence.  Allowing  that 
he  is  does  not  mean  that  he  has  not  the  power 
of  initiative  or  that  he  could  not  have  learned 
to  put  this  initiative  to  good  use,  if  at  any  time 
in  his  manhood  or  youth  he  had  been  taught  to 
use  it,  instead  of  being  required  to  follow  the 
accepted  ways  of  doing  things  without  having 
had  the  experience  of  trial  and  error.  Schools 
and  factory  management  give  workers  scant  op- 
\  portunity  to  discover  whether  they  have  initia- 
tive or  have  not. 


42  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

Mr.  Wolf  finds  that  "while  it  is  possible, 
under  certain  conditions,  to  compel  obedience, 
there  is  no  possible  way  in  which  a  man  can  be 
compelled  to  do  his  work  willingly  and  when  he 
does  it  unwillingly  he  is  far  from  being  efficient. 
He  must  have  the  opportunity  to  enjoy  his  work 
and  realize  himself  in  its  performance. "  "In 
our  plant,"  he  remarks,  "we  never  made  it  a 
practice  to  determine  arbitrarily  standard  meth- 
ods for  performing  an  operation,  for  we  be- 
lieve that  the  men  who  are  actually  doing  the 
work  have  generally  as  much  to  contribute  as 
the  foremen  and  department  heads  in  deciding 
standard  practices;  and  because  we  give  the 
workman  the  chance  to  have  the  most  to  say 
about  the  matter,  he  is  willing  to  conform  to  the 
standard,  because  it  really  represents  a  con- 
census of  opinion  of  the  men  in  his  particular 
group. "  It  is  significant  in  this  connection  to 
remember  that  he  does  not  pay  the  men  by 
special  methods  to  get  the  return.  "I  am  not 
necessarily  opposed  to  piece  work  or  task  and 
bonus  methods  of  payment.  .  .  .  We  have  been 
able  to  obtain  splendid  results  without  resorting 
to  a  system  of  immediate  money  rewards."  He 
thinks  it  is  better  to  pay  the  workers  liberally 
so  that  they  "can  forget  this'economic  pressure 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  43 

and  do  good  work  because  of  the  joy  that  comes 
from  the  consciousness  of  work  well  done." 
Scientific  management  like  ordinary  man- 
agement as  a  matter  of  fact  does  not  want  to 
cultivate  initiative  in  the  rank  and  file  of  work- 
ers ;  it  would  like  to  find  more  of  it ;  and  its  eter- 
nal expectation  is  that  enough  of  it  will  rise  out 
of  the  oppressive  atmosphere  of  the  factory 
system  to  supply  its  limited  needs.  Scientific 
management  especially  wants  this,  as  it  must 
have  more  foremen  and  teachers  to  carry  for- 
ward its  advanced  schemes  of  organization.  But 
every  manager  will  tell  you  that  industry  does 
not  produce  men  with  sufficient  initiative  to  fill 
these  positions.  Their  estimates  of  the  num- 
ber of  men  found  in  industry  who  have  initia- 
tive varies  from  one  to  five  per  cent.  The  rest 
they  believe  are  born,  routine  workers.  They 
speak  of  their  limitations  as  native.  Managers 
do  not  stop  to  consider  that  their  judgments 
are  based  wholly  on  the  reaction  of  the  mass  of 
wage  workers  to  the  special  stimuli  which  they 
offer.  They  say  also  that  high  school  and  col- 
lege boys  show  up  very  little  if  any  better  in 
respect  to  initiative  than  the  lower  school  prod- 
uct. The  truth  is  that  schools  and  colleges  are 
more  concerned  with  passing  on  the  standards 


44  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

of  an  older  generation  to  a  younger,  and  the 
younger  that  generation  is  t£e  less  it  is  en- 
trusted with  opportunity  to  make  its  own  first 
hand  inquiries.  That  is,  the  lower  schools  which 
deal  with  a  generation  at  its  most  plastic  time, 
furnish  the  higher  schools  with  minds  inured  to 
the  pressure  of  accepting  subject  matter  with- 
out independent  inquiry  or  curiosity. 

Factory  management  like  college  and  school 
management,  instead  of  depending  on  the  sub- 
ject matter  to  interest  the  workers,  instead 
of  opening  up  to  them  the  factors  of  in- 
terest in  industrial  enterprise,  has  adopted 
incentives  for  getting  the  required  work  done. 
{Enlightened  school  practice,  out  of  long  failure 
to  get  the  children's  initiative  by  the  artificial 
stimulus  of  rewards  for  work  done,  now  de- 
pends upon  the  content  of  the  subject  matter 
and  the  children's  experiments  with  it,  to  de- 
velop their  desire  to  do  the  work.  The  practice 
of  depending  on  school  rewards  instead  of  in- 
terest in  subject  matter  is  largely  responsible 
for  superficial  knowledge  and  lack  of  ability  to 
think  as  well  as  to  act.  As  schools  fail  to  incite 
the  interest  of  the  children  they  train  them  to 
put  through  this  and  that  task  and  reward  them 
for  it  without  having  added  to  their  power  of 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  45 

undertaking  tasks  on  their  own  account.  In- 
deed, as  they  fail  to  give  them  the  chance  to  do 
that,  they  actually  decrease  whatever  power 
they  may  have  had. 

The  doing  of  tasks  in  factories  for  the  sake 
of  rewards,  gives  the  workers  experience  in  win- 
ning rewards.  As  they  are  interested  only  in 
the  reward,  they  carry  away  no  desire  or  inter- 
est in  the  work  experience.  As  the  method  of 
doing  the  work  is  prescribed  in  every  detail  and 
their  only  requirement,  under  scientific  man- 
agement, is  to  follow  directions  with  accuracy, 
they  are  trained  to  do  their  tasks  as  the  chil- 
dren in  school  are  trained.  They  are  trained 
in  routine,  and  to  do  each  task  as  it  is  given.  - 
This  is  not  education,  it  is  training  to  do  tricks. 
The  worker  does  not  take  over  what  can  be  called 
experience  from  one  task  to  another.  He  forms 
certain  motor  habits,  called  skill.  But  under 
the  efficient  methods  of  scientific  management 
the  acquirement  of  this  skill  is  robbed  even  of 
the  educational  value  that  it  had  under  the  un- 
scientific method  of  factory  work,  which  within 
its  limited  field,  left  the  worker  to  discover  by 
trial  and  error  what  were  the  best  methods  of 
getting  results.  Moreover,  the  standards  of 
workmanship  which  scientific  management  sets 


46  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

up  are  not  the  worker's  own  standards;  he  has 
had  no  part  in  the  making  of  them  or  in  decid- 
ing on  the  comparative  merits  of  the  results. 
He  accomplishes  the  results  as  he  follows  direc- 
tions, not  for  the  sake  of  the  result,  not  for  the 
sake  of  good  workmanship,  but  for  the  reward. 
As  I  have  said  scientific  management  has 
given  the  subject  of  incentives  the  same  careful 
thought  that  it  has  given  to  the  study  of  lost 
energy.  The  two  important  incentives  for  in- 
ducing the  response  of  labor  to  productive  en- 
terprises which  scientific  management  has  car- 
ried forward  in  their  applications,  are  wages 
and  promotion.  The  general  assumption  is  that 
the  wage  as  an  incentive  has  no  limitations, 
except  the  physical  limitation  of  a  human  being 
in  response  to  stimulus.  And  surely  it  is  true 
that  the  chance  to  "make  money"  is  to-day  the 
most  powerful  stimulus  in  use.  But  thoughtful 
managers  of  industrial  enterprise  tell  you,  in- 
credible as  it  may  seem,  that  the  worker's  ob- 
jection to  applying  himself  to  his  task  is  not 
invariably  overcome  by  anticipation  of  the  wage 
return;  he  will  slack  or  be  perverse  or  throw 
over  a  job  in  the  face  of  opportunities  to  earn  as 
good  a  wage  or  a  better  one  than  he  can  get  else- 
where. It  is  well  known  that  workers  join 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  47 

unions  in  the  face  of  opposition  of  employers 
and  at  the  risk  of  losing  permanent  positions. 

A  resourceful  manager  in  one  of  the  most  in- 
telligently managed  plants  in  the  United  States 
told  me  that  women  were  less  susceptible  than 
men  to  the  wage  incentive.  He  found  that 
many  of  them  are  content  when  their  wage 
covers  a  sum  which  represents  for  them  their 
personal  requirements;  that  they  cannot  in- 
terest them  in  trying  for  more.  On  that  ac- 
count the  manager  takes  up  the  case  of  the  in- 
dividual girl  to  see  if  her  ambition  to  earn  more 
money  cannot  be  stimulated.  They  find  some- 
times that  a  mother  requires  her  daughter  to 
give  in  her  whole  wage  at  the  end  of  the  week 
and  that  the  girl  has  no  pleasure  in  the  spend- 
ing of  it;  they  visit  the  mother  and  persuade 
her  to  let  the  girl  keep  a  proportion  of  her  wage 
and  point  out  to  the  mother  that  she  is  limiting 
the  girl's  ambition.  They  also  find  girls  who 
have  entire  control  over  the  spending  of  their 
wages,  who  are  without  ambition  to  earn  over 
and  above  a  certain  sum  because  that  sum  will 
meet  their  own  recognized  needs.  The  case  of 
these  girls  the  management  tries  to  cover  by  en- 
couraging them  to  save  for  vacations  and  other 
purposes  which  they  offer  by  way  of  suggestion. 


48  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTEY 

In  both  of  these  instances  the  management  un- 
dertakes to  create  new  wants  or  ways  of  realiz- 
ing wants  which  were  not  recognized  by  the 
workers  themselves.  The  satisfaction  of  these 
wants  may  or  may  not  be  in  the  direction  of 
extending  experience  and  expanding  contacts. 
But  that  is  neither  here  nor  there.  The  point  is, 
the  manager  of  the  industry  has  used  an  incen- 
tive for  increasing  production  which  has  no  re- 
lation to  production  itself.  He  is  forced  to  do 
this  because  he  fails  to  make  the  process  of 
production  a  matter  of  interest  to  the  worker. 
The  processes  of  production  do  not  of  them- 
selves as  we  know  compel  the  workers'  applica- 
tion or  stimulate  their  desire  for  productive 
enterprise. 

It  is  in  the  nature  of  the  case  impossible  to 
increase  the  wage  incentive  indefinitely.  One 
large  and  scientifically  managed  plant  has  made 
remarkable  provisions  for  staving  off  the  time 
when  the  dead  line  is  reached.  They  have  taken 
stock  account  of  the  labor  power  they  require, 
the  amount  of  energy  which  each  worker  pos- 
sesses, for  the  purpose  of  evaluation  and  pay- 
ment. They  have  undertaken  to  cover  as  sep- 
arate items  each  condition  which  affects  a 
worker's  relation  to  his  job.  They  rate  as  sep- 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  49 

arate  items  the  worker's  proficiency,  reliability, 
continuity  in  service,  indirect  charges,  increased 
cost  of  living,  and  periods  of  lay-off ;  they  rate 
him  according  to  the  number  of  technical  proc- 
esses he  is  proficient  in,  whether  or  not  he  is 
engaged  on  more  than  one ;  they  rate  him  if  he 
attends  the  night  school  connected  with  the 
factory  and  shows  in  this  way  a  disposition  to 
learn  other  operations  than  those  he  already 
knows.  Why,  they  wonder,  does  only  ten  per 
cent  of  the  force  take  advantage  of  the  school 
and  what,  they  are  eager  to  find  out,  can  they 
do  further  to  secure  the  men's  cooperation. 
For  "cooperation,"  they  say,  "in  a  special  way 
deserves  credit,  since  it  is  unexpected  .  .  .  cer- 
tain well  defined  acts  of  cooperation  will  bring 
extra  reward."  Their  rewards  so  carefully 
calculated  did  not  seem  to  enlist  response  as 
spiritual  in  its  nature  as  cooperation.  It 
seemed  that  they  had  reached  "the  dead  line" 
where  wage  stimulus  fails  to  draw  its  hoped  for 
response. 

To  get  from  the  workers  the  highest  efficiency 
the  scientifically  managed  plants  pay  for  a  task 
a  stated  rate  based  on  piece  or  time ;  if  the  task 
is  performed  within  the  time  set  and  the  direc- 
tions for  doing  the  task  as  laid  out  by  the  man- 


50  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

agement,  are  followed,  the  worker  receives  in 
addition  to  the  regular  rate>  a  bonus-  Mr 
H.  L.  Gant,  while  working  with  Mr.  Taylor, 
discovered  that  there  was  weakness  in  the  sys- 
tem of  paying  bonuses,  and  the  weakness  was 
not  overcome  until  he  devised  a  method  of  pay- 
ing the  workman  for  the  time  allowed  plus  a 
percentage  of  that  time  according  to  what  he 
did.  This  method  he  declares  constantly  in- 
duced further  effort  and  overcame  what  they 
discovered  was  the  weakness  in  a  flat  bonus. 
As  fair  or  as  superior  as  this  bonus  may  be  in 
relation  to  the  prevailing  rate  in  the  market, 
managers  say  that  the  workers  are  apt  in  time 
to  fall  below  the  standard  as  their  work  be- 
comes routine,  unless  the  incentive  after  a  time 
is  increased  or  changed  in  character.  In  other 
words  the  wage  incentive  is  like  a  virus  injec- 
tion. The  dose  is  not  continuously  effective, 
except  as  the  amount  is  increased  or  altered. 

A  usual  method  of  keeping  alive  the  financial 
incentive  is  profit  sharing  and  schemes  for  par- 
ticipation in  profits,  but  they  are  rewards  of 
-general  merit  and  bids  for  continuity  of  ser- 
vice ;  they  have  no  direct  relation  to  the  work- 
ers 9  efficiency  and  compliance  with  standards 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  51 

which  distinguish  the  wage  rewards  of  scien- 
tifically managed  plants. 

Promotion,  the  incentive  second  in  impor- 
tance to  the  wage  incentive,  is  of  assistance  in 
postponing  the  time  when  the  dead  line  for 
the  worker  is  reached.  Nothing  better  illus- 
trates the  limitations  of  promotion  in  this  re- 
spect than  the  fact  that  in  factories  where  the 
turnover  is  the  lowest,  the  opportunity  to  pro- 
mote the  workers  decreases ;  it  falls  in  propor- 
tion to  the  length  of  their  term  of  service.  That 
is,  chances  for  promotion  are  the  lowest  in 
factories  where  conditions  otherwise  are  favor- 
able to  the  worker.  In  the  factory  where  the 
turnover  is  only  18  per  cent  the  management 
says  that  promotion  is  a  negligible  factor. 
Where  the  turnover  is  high  there  is  greater  op- 
portunity in  plants  scientifically  managed  than 
in  others  to  promote  men,  as  the  scheme  of  or- 
ganization calls  for  a  larger  number  of  what 
tkey  call  "functionalized  foremen "  and  teach- 
ers in  proportion  to  the  working  force. 

It  is  as  I  have  said,  on  account  of  the  neces- 
sity of  these  positions  in  the  general  scheme 
that  managers  of  factories  are  interested  in 
finding  more  men  who  have  initiative,  than  in- 
dustry under  their  direction  has  produced. 


52  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

Before  scientific  management  was  discovered, 
business  management  and  machinery  already 
had  robbed  industry  of  productive  incentives, 
of  the  real  incentive  to  production ;  a  realization 
on  the  part  of  the  worker  of  its  social  value  and 
his  appreciation  of  its  creative  content.  All  that 
was  left  for  scientific  management  to  gather  to- 
gether for  its  direction  were  bits  of  experience 
which  workers  gained  by  their  own  experimen- 
tal efforts  at  how  best  to  handle  tools.  Their 
efforts  it  is  true  were  not  sufficiently  great  in 
this  direction  to  promise  progressive  industrial 
advance.  The  margin  for  experiment  which 
was  still  theirs  was  not  sufficiently  large  to  in- 
sure continued  effort  inspired  by  an  interest  in 
the  work. 

When  we  have  taken  into  full  account  the 
repressive  effect  of  scientific  management  on 
initiative,  we  may  well  admit  an  advantage: 
educationally  speaking,  the  repression  is  direct. 
The  workers  are  fully  aware  that  they  are  doing 
what  some  one  else  requires  of  them.  They  are 
not  under  the  delusion  that  they  are  acting  on 
their  own  initiative.  They  are  being  managed 
and  they  know  it  and  all  things  being  equal 
(which  they  are  not)  they  do  not  like  it.  The 
responsibility  they  may  clearly  see  and  feel 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  53 

rests  with  them  to  find  a  better  scheme  for 
carrying  industry  forward.  The  methods  of 
scientific  management  are  calculated  to  incite 
not  only  open  criticism  from  the  workers  but  to 
suggest  that  efficient  industry  is  a  matter  of 
learning,  and  that  learning  is  a  game  at  which 
all  can  play,  if  the  opportunity  is  provided. 

Scientific  managers  have  hoped  that  their 
plans  to  conserve  energy  and  increase  the  wage 
in  relation  to  expenditure  of  energy  would  meet 
little  opposition.  They  also  have  hoped  that 
the  paternalistic  feature  of  welfare  work  would 
allay  opposition.  But  I  am  not  inclined  to  in- 
clude the  welfare  schemes  in  a  consideration  of 
scientific  management;  they  have  little  light 
to  throw  on  what  educational  significance  there 
is  in  the  efficiency  methods  which  scientific  man- 
agement has  introduced  in  industry.  The  play- 
grounds attached  to  factories,  the  indoor  pro- 
visions for  social  activity,  the  clubs,  while  not 
having  an  acknowledged  relation  to  the  scien- 
tific management  of  the  factory  and  while  re- 
pudiated by  some  managers,  are  a  common  fea- 
ture of  plants  which  claim  to  be  scientifically 
managed.  There  are  scientifically  managed 
plants  which  object  to  the  recreational  and 
other  features  which  have  to  do  with  matters 


54  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

outside  the  province  of  the  factory,  on  the 
ground  that  it  is  a  meddling  with  the  personal 
side  of  people's  lives.  "A  baseball  game  con- 
nected with  the  factory,"  said  the  educational 
manager  of  a  certain  plant,  "has  the  effect  of 
limiting  the  workers'  contacts;  it  is  much  bet- 
ter for  them,  as  it  is  for  every  one,  not  to  nar- 
row their  relationships  to  a  small  group,  but 
to  play  ball  with  the  people  of  the  town."  It 
is  significant  that  this  concern  deals  with  the 
union  and  conforms  to  its  regulations.  Whether 
this  more  generous  concept  of  the  workers' 
lives  yields  more  in  manufactured  goods  than 
one  that  confines  the  activity  of  the  workers 
to  the  factory  in  which  they  labor,  scientific 
management,  so  far  as  I  know,  has  not  discov- 
ered. 

The  very  nature  of  the  welfare  schemes  sug- 
gests that  they  are  inspired  more  out  of  fear 
of  the  workers'  freedom  of  contact  than 
launched  on  account  of  comparative  findings 
which  relate  strictly  to  the  economy  of  labor 
power.  The  policy  of  leaving  the  workers  free, 
it  was  clear  in  the  instance  just  cited,  had  been 
adopted  out  of  a  personal  preference  for  free- 
dom in  relationships.  The  introduction  of 
clinics,  rest  rooms,  restaurants,  sanitary  pro- 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  55 

visions,  and  all  arrangements  relating  directly 
to  the  workers'  health  have  a  bearing  on  effi- 
ciency and  productivity  which  is  well  recognized 
and  probably  universally  endorsed  by  efficiency 
managers,  even  if  they  are  not  invariably 
adopted. 

Scientific  management  wants  two  things; 
more  men  in  the  labor  market  to  fill  the  posi- 
tions of  functionalized  foremen,  more  men  than 
modern  industrial  society  has  produced;  and 
it  wants  an  army  of  workers  who  will  follow 
directions,  follow  them  as  one  of  the  managers 
said,  as  soldiers  follow  them.  It  wants  this 
army  to  be  endowed  as  well  with  the  impulse 
to  produce.  It  may  by  its  methods  realize  one 
of  its  wants,  that  is,  an  army  of  workers  to 
follow  directions;  but  as  it  succeeds  in  this, 
as  it  is  successful  in  robbing  industry  of  its  con- 
tent, and  as  it  reduces  processes  to  routine,  it 
will  limit  its  chances  to  find  foremen  who  have 
initiative  and  it  will  fail  to  get  from  workers 
the  impulse  to  produce  goods. 

During  the  last  four  years,  under  the  stress 
of  a  consuming  war  every  stimulus  employed  by 
business  management  for  speeding  up  produc- 
tion has  been  advanced.  Organized  efficiency  in 
the  handling  of  materials  has  increased  the  out- 


56  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

put,  as  increased  rewards  to  capital  and  labor 
have  stimulated  effort.  But  the  quantitative  de- 
mand of  consumption  requirements  is  insati- 
able. It  is  not  humanly  possible  under  the  pres- 
ent industrial  arrangements  to  satisfy  the 
world's  demand  for  goods,  either  in  time  of 
war  or  peace.  It  was  never  more  apparent 
than  it  is  now,  that  an  increase  in  a  wage  rate 
is  a  temporary  expedient  and  that  wage  rewards 
are  not  efficient  media  for  securing  sustained 
interest  in  productive  enterprise.  It  is  becom- 
ing obvious  that  the  wage  system  has  not  the 
qualifications  for  the  coordination  of  industrial 
life.  As  the  needs  of  the  nations  under  the 
pressure  of  war  have  brought  out  the  ineffi- 
ciencies of  the  economic  institution,  it  has  be- 
come sufficiently  clear  to  those  responsible  for 
the  conduct  of  the  war  and  to  large  sections  of 
the  civil  population,  that  wealth  exploitation 
and  wealth  creation  are  not  synonymous;  that 
the  production  of  wealth  must  rest  on  other  mo- 
tives than  the  desire  of  individuals  to  get  as 
much  and  give  as  little  as  particular  situations 
will  stand. 

In  England  and  in  the  United  States,  where 
the  individualistic  conception  of  the  industrial 
life  has  been  an  inherent  part  of  our  national 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  57 

philosophy,  the  governments,  with  cautious 
reservations,  have  assumed  responsibilities 
which  had  been  carried  in  normal  times  by  busi- 
ness. Because  business  administration  had 
been  dependent  for  its  existence  on  a  scheme  of 
profiteering  it  is  not  in  the  position  where  it 
can  appeal  to  labor  to  contribute  its  produc- 
tive power  in  the  spirit  of  patriotic  abandon. 
But  governments  as  they  have  taken  over  cer- 
tain industrial  responsibilities  are  in  a  better 
position  to  make  such  appeals  to  capital  as  well 
as  to  labor. 

The  calculable  effect  of  the  appeal  to  capital 
to  assume  the  responsibility  is  in  the  long  run 
of  passing  importance,  as  under  the  present 
business  arrangement  that  is  the  position  cap- 
ital occupies.  In  other  words,  the  appeal  will 
mark  no  change  in  capitalist  psychology  as  it 
promises  to  do  in  the  case  of  labor. 

The  calculable  effect  on  labor  psychology  may 
have  revolutionary  significance.  It  is  quite  an- 
other sort  of  appeal  in  its  effect  from  the 
stereotyped  and  familiar  one  of  employers  to 
labor  to  feel  their  responsibility.  That  appeal 
never  reached  the  consciousness  of  working  men 
for  the  reason  that  it  is  impossible  to  feel  re- 
sponsible or  to  be  responsible  where  there  is 


58  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

no  chance  of  bearing  the  responsibility.  Ex- 
periencing responsibility  in  industry  means 
nothing  more  nor  less  than  sharing  in  the  de- 
cisions, the  determination  of  procedure,  as  well 
as  suffering  from  the  failure  of  those  decisions 
and  participating  in  their  successful  eventua- 
tion.  As  the  governments  in  the  present  case 
have  made  their  appeals  to  labor  they  have  car- 
ried the  suggestion  of  partnership  in  respon- 
sibility because  the  government  is  presumably 
the  people's  voice  and  its  needs  also  presum- 
ably are  the  common  needs  and  not  the  special 
interests  of  individuals.  It  is  hardly  necessary 
to  point  out  that  it  was  not  the  intention  of 
government  officials  who  made  the  appeal  to 
excite  a  literal  interpretation;  they  did  not  ex- 
pect to  be  taken  so  seriously  and  up  to  date 
they  have  not  been  taken  more  seriously  than 
they  intended  by  American  labor.  All  they 
mean  and  what  they  expect  to  gain,  is  what  em- 
ployers have  meant  and  wanted;  that  is  labor's 
surrender  of  its  assumed  right  to  strike  on  the 
job,  its  surrender  of  its  organized  time  stand- 
ards and  its  principle  of  collective  bargaining. 
But  when  officials  speak  in  the  name  of  a  gov- 
ernment what  they  mean  is  unimportant;  what 
it  means  to  the  people  to  have  them  speak,  and 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  59 

the  people's  interpretation  of  what  they  say, 
is  the  important  matter. 

These  appeals  of  the  governments  in  this 
time  of  war  to  the  working  people  have  the  ten- 
dency to  clear  the  environment  of  the  sugges- 
tion that  common  labor,  that  is  the  wage  earn- 
ing class  (as  distinguished  from  salaried  peo- 
ple, employers  and  the  profiteers  pure  and  sim- 
ple) are  incompetent  to  play  a  responsible  part 
in  the  work  of  wealth  production.  A  respon- 
sible part  does  not  mean  merely  doing  well  a  de- 
tached and  technical  job;  it  means  facing  the 
risks  and  sharing  in  the  experimental  experi- 
ence of  productive  enterprise  as  it  serves  the 
promotion  of  creative  life  and  the  needs  of  an 
expanding  civilization.  As  the  appeals  of  the 
governments  at  this  time  bear  the  stamp  of  a 
nation's  will,  its  valuation  and  respect  for  com- 
mon labor,  there  is  the  chance,  it  seems,  that 
they  may  carry  to  the  workers  the  ener- 
gizing thought  that  all  the  members  of 
the  industrial  group  must  assume,  actually  as- 
sume, responsibility  for  production,  if  produc- 
tion is  to  advance.  Equally  important  in  the  in- 
terest of  creative  work  is  the  power  of  these  ap- 
peals to  shift  the  motive  for  production  from  the 
acquisitive  to  the  creative  impulse.  In  the  midst 


60  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

of  the  world's  emergency,  driven  by  the  fear 
of  destruction  the  nations  have  turned  instinc- 
tively to  the  unused  creative  force  in  human  and 
common  labor,  that  is  to  the  ability  of  the  wage 
earner  to  think  and  plan.  If  the  responseof 
labor  is  genuine,  if  with  generous  abandoWfc 
releases  its  full  productive  energy,  it  is  quite 
certain  as  matters  now  stand  that  neither  the 
governments  nor  the  financiers  are  prepared  to 
accept  the  consequence. 

If  labor  in  answer  to  these  appeals  gains  the 
confidence  that  it  is  competent  to  carry  indus- 
trial responsibility,  or  rather  that  common  la- 
bor, together  with  the  trained  technicians  in 
mechanics  and  industrial  organization  are  com- 
petent as  a  producing  group  to  carry  the  re- 
sponsibility, one  need  we  may  be  sure  will  be 
eliminated  which  has  been  an  irritating  and  an 
unproductive  element  in  industrial  life ;  I  mean 
the  need  the  workers  have  had  for  the  cultiva- 
tion of  class  isolation.  As  the  workers  become 
in  the  estimation  of  a  community  and  in  their 
own  estimation,  responsible  members  of  a  so- 
ciety, their  more  rather  than  less  abortive  effort 
to  develop  class  feeling  in  America,  will  disap- 
pear. Under  those  conditions  concerted  class  ac- 
tion will  be  confined  to  the  employers  of  labor 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  61 

and  the  profiteers,  who  will  be  placed  in  the  po- 
sition of  proving  their  value  and  their  place  in 
the  business  of  wealth  creation.    On  this  I  be- 
lieve we  may  count,  that  labor  will  drop  its  de- 
«ive  program  for  a  constructive  one,  as  it 
BS  to  appreciate  its  own  creative  potentiality. 

Judging  from  recent  events  in  England, 
where  the  government  appeals  to  labor  have 
had  longer  time  to  take  effect,  it  seems  that  new 
brain  tracks  in  labor  psychology  have  actually 
been  created.  English  labor  apparently  is  be- 
ginning to  take  the  impassioned  appeals  of  its 
government  seriously  and  is  making  ready  to 
assume  the  responsibility  for  production.  The 
resolutions  adopted  by  the  Labor  Party  at  its 
Nottingham  Conference  in  November  in  1917 
covered  organized  labor's  usual  defense  pro- 
gram relating  to  wage  conditions.  The  Mani- 
festo which  was  issued  was  first  of  all  a  poli- 
tical document,  written  and  compiled  for  cam- 
paign purposes.  But  the  significance  of  the 
party's  action  is  the  new  interpretation  which 
it  is  beginning  to  give  industrial  democracy.  It 
is  evident  where  state  ownership  is  contem- 
plated that  the  old  idea  that  industry  would  pass 
under  the  administrative  direction  of  govern- 


62  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

ment  officials,  is  replaced  by  the  growing  in- 
tention and  desire  of  labor  to  assume  respon- 
sibility for  administration  whether  industry  is 
publicly  or  privately  owned.  The  Party  stands 
for  the  "  widest  possible  participation  both  eco- 
nomic and  political  ...  in  industry  as  well  as^ 
in  government/'  In  explanation  of  the  Mani- 
festo, the  leader  of  the  Party  is  quoted  in  the 
Manchester  Guardian  as  saying,  that  when  la- 
bor now  speaks  of  industrial  democracy  it  no 
longer  means  what  it  did  before  the  war ;  it  does 
not  mean  political  administration  of  economic 
affairs ;  it  means  primarily  industrial  self-gov- 
ernment. 

Perhaps  an  even  better  evidence  of  the  inten- 
tion of  English  labor  in  this  direction  is  the 
movement  towards  decentralization  in  the  trade 
union  organization.  This  movement,  known  as 
the  "shop-stewards"  movement  is  essentially 
an  effort  of  the  men  in  the  workshops  to  assume 
responsibility  in  industrial  reconstruction  after 
the  war,  a  responsibility  which  they  have  here- 
tofore under  all  circumstances  delegated  to  rep- 
resentatives not  connected  directly  with  the 
work  in  the  shops.  As  these  representatives 
were  isolated  from  actual  problems  of  work- 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  63 

shop  production  and  alien  therefore  to  the 
problems  in  their  technical  and  specific  appli- 
cation, they  were  incapable  of  functioning  ef- 
ficiently as  agents  of  productive  enterprise. 
This  "shop  stewards "  movement  recognizes 
and  provides  for  the  interdependence  of  indus- 
trial interests,  but  at  the  same  time  it  concerns 
itself  with  the  competent  handling  of  specific 
matters. 

Such  organization  as  the  movement  in  Eng- 
land seems  to  be  evolving,  the  syndicalists  have 
contended  for  as  they  opposed  the  German  idea 
of  state  socialism.  But  the  syndicalists  in  their 
propaganda  did  not  develop  the  idea  of  indus- 
try as  an  adventure  in  creative  enterprise.  In- 
stead they  emphasized,  as  did  the  political  so- 
cialists and  the  trade  unionists,  the  importance 
of  protecting  the  workers'  share  in  the  posses- 
sion of  wealth.  They  made  the  world  under- 
stand that  business  administration  of  industry 
exploited  labor,  but  they  did  not  bring  out  that 
both  capital  and  labor,  so  far  as  it  was  possible 
for  each  to  do,  exploited  wealth.  That  was  not 
the  vision  of  industry  which  they  carried  from 
their  shops  to  their  meetings  or  indeed  to  their 
homes.  Their  failure  at  exploitation  was  too 
obvious. 


64  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

An  interesting  illustration  of  what  would  hap- 
pen in  the  ranks  of  the  syndicalists  if  the  busi- 
ness idea  of  labor's  intellectual  and  emotional 
incapacity  for  functioning,  gave  way  before  a 
community's  confidence  in  the  capacity  of  la- 
bor— we  have  in  the  case  of  the  migratory  work- 
ers in  the  harvesting  of  our  western  crops.  The 
harvesters  who  follow  the  crops  with  the  sea- 
sons from  the  southern  to  the  northern  borders 
of  the  United  States  and  into  Canada  are  mem- 
bers of  the  most  uncompromisingly  militant 
organization  of  syndicalists,  The  Industrial 
Workers  of  the  World.  On  an  average  it  takes 
ten  years  for  these  harvesters  to  become  skilled 
workers  and  these  men,  members  of  this  con- 
demned organization,  are  the  most  highly  skilled 
harvesters  in  the  country.  On  account  of  their 
revolutionary  doctrines  and  their  combined  de- 
termination to  reap  rewards  as  well  as  crops, 
they  are  considered  and  treated  like  outlaws, 
and  outlaws  of  the  established  order  they  are 
in  spirit.  When  the  owners  of  the  farms  of 
North  Dakota  realized  that  their  own  returns 
on  the  harvests  were  diverted  in  the  marketing 
of  their  grain,  they  combined  for  protection 
against  the  grain  exchanges  and  the  elevator 
trusts.  While  developing  their  movement  they 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  65 

discovered  that  the  natural  alliance  for  their 
organization  to  make  was  with  the  men  who 
were  involved  with  them  in  the  production  of 
grain.  And  as  the  farmers  have  accepted  the 
harvesters  as  partners  they  have  formed  in 
effect  a  coordinated  producing  combination. 
Without  finally  settling  the  problem  of  agricul- 
ture, they  have  strengthened  the  production 
group  and  eliminated  strife  at  the  most  vital 
point. 

In  the  period  of  reconstruction  the  industrial 
issues  of  significance  to  democracy  will  be 
whether  or  not  management  of  industry  as  it 
has  been  assumed  by  the  state  for  the  purpose 
of  war  shall  revert  after  the  war  to  the  condi- 
tion of  incompetency  which  the  war  emergency 
disclosed  or  whether  state  management  shall  be 
extended  and  developed  as  it  was  in  Germany 
after  the  Franco-Prussian  War.  Fortunately, 
these  evidences  of  a  new  interest  of  labor  in  in- 
dustry as  a  social  institution,  give  us  some 
reason  to  hope  tnat  we  shall  not  be  confined  to 
a  choice  between  business  incompetency  and 
state  socialism.  The  evidence  of  the  desire 
on  the  part  of  the  labor  force  to  participate  in 

Che  development  of  production  is  the  factor  we 
should  keep  in  mind  in  any  plans  for  demo- 


66  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

cratio  industrial  reconstruction.  It  is  inevitable 
that  an  effort  to  open  up  and  cultivate  this  de- 
sire of  labor  will  be  regarded  by  the  present 
governing  forces  with  apprehension.  The  move- 
ment of  labor  in  this  direction  is  now  looked  up- 
on with  suspicion  even  by  people  who  are  not  in 
a  position  of  control.  The  general  run  of  peo- 
ple in  fact  outside  of  those  who  recognize  labor 
as  a  fundamental  force  in  industrial  reconstruc- 
tion, conceive  of  the  labor  people  as  an  irre- 
sponsible mass  of  men  and  view  their  move- 
ments as  expressions  of  an  irresponsible  desire 
to  seize  responsibility.  They  are  the  men  who 
are  not  experienced  in  business  affairs  and 
therefore  cannot,  it  is  believed,  be  trusted.  The 
arguments  against  trusting  them  are  the  same 
old  arguments  advanced  for  many  centuries 
against  inroads  on  the  established  order  of 
over-lordship.  But  over-lordship  has  flourished 
at  all  times,  and  in  the  present  scheme  of  in- 
dustry it  flourishes  as  it  always  has,  in  propor- 
tion to  the  reluctance  of  the  people  to  partici- 
pate as  responsible  factors  in  matters  of  com- 
mon concern.  Corruption  and  exploitation  of 
governments  and  of  industry  are  dependent 
upon  the  broadest  possible  participation  of  a 
whole  people  in  the  experience  and  responsi- 


THE  AMERICAN  WAY  67 

bilities  of  their  common  life.  It  is  for  this  rea- 
son that  we  need  to  foster  and  develop  the  op- 
portunity as  well  as  the  desire  for  responsi- 
bility among  the  common  people. 

After  the  war,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  America 
will  undertake  to  realize  through  its  schemes 
for  reconstruction  its  present  ideals  of  self- 
government.  As  it  does  this,  we  shall  discover 
that  the  issues  which  are  of  significance  to  de- 
mocracy are  of  significance  to  education;  for 
democracy  and  education  are  processes  con- 
cerned with  the  people's  ability  to  solve  their 
problems  through  their  experience  in  solving 
them.  If  America  is  ever  to  realize  its  concept 
of  political  democracy,  it  can  accept  neither  the 
autocratic  method  of  business  management  nor 
the  bureaucratic  schemes  of  state  socialism.  It 
cannot  realize  political  democracy  until  it  rea- 
lizes in  a  large  measure  the  democratic  admin- 
istration of  industry. 


CHAPTER  III 

ADAPTING  PEOPLE  TO  INDUSTRY — THE  GERMAN  WAY 

STATESMANSHIP  in  Germany  covered  "indus- 
trial strategy "  as  well  as  political.  Its  labor 
protection  and  regulations  were  in  line  with  its 
imperial  policy  of  domination.  Within  recent 
years  labor  protection  from  the  point  of  view  of 
statesmanship  has  been  urged  in  England  and 
America.  The  waste  of  life  is  a  matter  of  un- 
concern in  the  United  States  so  long  as  private 
business  can  replenish  its  labor  without  seri- 
ously depleting  the  oversupply.  It  becomes  a 
matter  of  concern  only  when  there  are  no  work- 
ers waiting  for  employment.  The  German, 
state  has  regulated  the  conditions  of  labor  and. 
conserved  human  energy  because  its  purpose 
has  been  not  the  short-lived  one  of  private  busi- 
ness, but  the  long-lived  one  of  imperial  compe- 
tition. It  was  the  policy  of  the  Prussian  state 
to  conserve  human  energy  for  the  strength  and 
the  enrichment  of  the  Empire.  Whatever  was 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  69 

good  for  the  Empire  was  good,  it  was  assumed, 
for  the  people.  The  humanitarians  in  the  United 
States  who  tried  to  introduce  labor  legislation 
in  their  own  country  accepted  this  naive  philos- 
ophy of  the  German  people,  which  had  been  so 
skilfully  developed  by  Prussian  statesmen,  with- 
out appreciating  that  its  result  was  enervating. 
Our  prevailing  political  philosophy,  however, 
that  workers  and  capitalists  understand  their 
own  interests  and  are  more  capable  than  the 
state  of  looking  after  them,  stood  in  the  way 
of  adopting  on  grounds  of  statesmanship  the 
German  methods. 

The  American  working  man  has  never  been 
convinced  that  he  can  get  odds  of  material  ad- 
vantage from  the  state.  Hisjmethod  is  to_get 
all  he  can  thrhull'ood  Kck  or  his  su- 


perior wits.  He  could  find  no  satisfaction  like 
hi£~frerman  brothers  in  surrendering  concrete 
interests  for  some  abstract  idea  of  a  state.  He 
could  find  no  greater  pleasure  in  being  exploited 
by  the  state  than  he  now  finds  in  exploitation 
by  private  business.  The  average  American 
values  life  for  what  he  can  get  out  of  it,  or  for 
what  he  can  put  into  it.  He  has  no  sentimental 
value  of  service,  nor  is  service  anywhere  with 
us  an  institutionalized  ideal.  We  judge  it  on 


70  CEEATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

its  merits,  detached  perhaps,  but  still  for  what 
it  actually  renders  in  values. 

In  conformity  with  American  ideals,  wage 
earners  look  to  their  own  movements  and  not  to 
the  state  for  protection.  Their  movements  re^ 
quire  infinite  sacrifice,  but  they  supply  them 
with  an  interest  and  an  opportunity  for  initia- 
tive which  their  job  lacks.  The  most  important 
antidote  for  the  workers  to  factory  and  busi- 
ness methods  is  not  shorter  hours  or  well  cal- 
culated rest  periods  or  even  change-off  from 
one  kind  of  routine  work  to  another.  As  im- 
portant as  these  may  be,  reform  in  labor  hours 
does  not  compensate  the  worker  for  his  exclu- 
sion from  the  directing  end  of  the  enterprise  of 
which  he  is  a  part  and  from  a  position  where  he 
can  understand  the  purpose  of  his  work.  The 
trade  union  interference  with  the  business  of 
wealth  production  is  in  part  an  attempt  to  es- 
tablish a  coordination  of  the  worker  which  is 
destroyed  in  the  prosecution  of  business  and 
factory  organization.  The  interference  of  the 
union  is  an  attempt  to  bridge  the  gulf  between 
the  routine  of  service  and  the  administration 
and  direction  of  the  service  which  the  worker 
gives. 

I  do  not  intend  to  imply  that  the  labor  move- 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  71 

ment  is  a  conscious  attempt  at  such  coordina- 
tion. It  is  not.  The  conscious  purpose  is  the 
direct  and  simple  desire  to  resist  specific  acts 
of  domination  and  to  increase  labor's  economic 
returns.  But  any  one  who  follows  the  sacrifices 
which  organized  workers  make  for  some  small 
and  equivocal  gain  or  who  watches  them  in  their 
periods  of  greatest  activity,  knows  that  the  la- 
bor movement  gets  its  stimulus,  its  high  pitch 
of  interest,  not  from  its  struggle  for  higher 
wage  rates,  but  from  the  worker's  participa- 
tion in  the  administration  of  affairs  connected 
with  life  in  the  shop.  The  real  tragedy  in  a  lost 
strike  is  not  the  failure  to  gain  the  wage  de- 
mand; it  is  the  return  of  the  defeated  strikers 
to  work,  as  men  unequipped  with  the  adminis- 
trative power — as  men  without  will. 

There  could  be  no  greater  contrast  of  methods 
of  two  movements  purporting  to  be  the  same, 
than  the  labor  movement  in  Germany  and  in 
the  United  States.  The  German  workers  de- 
pended on  their  political  representatives  al- 
most wholly  to  gain  their  economic  rewards. 
Their  organizations  made  their  appeal  to  the 
sort  of  a  state  which  Bismarck  set  up.  They 
would  realize  democracy,  happiness,  they  be- 


72    CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

lieved,  when  their  state  represented  labor  and 
enacted  statutes  in  its  behalf. 

If  Germany  loses  the  war  the  chances  are 
that  the  people  may  recognize  what  it  means 
for  the  people  of  a  nation  to  let  the  title  to  their 
lives  rest  with  the  state;  they  will  know  per- 
haps whether  for  the  protection  they  have  been 
given  and  for  the  regulation  of  their  affairs 
and  destiny  they  have  paid  more  than  the  work- 
ers of  other  countries,  who,  less  protected  by 
law,  suffered  the  exigencies  of  their  assumed 
independence. 

How  much  the  German  people  depended  upon 
the  state  and  how  much  their  destiny  is  affected 
by  it  is  illustrated  better  by  their  educational 
system  and  its  relation  to  industry  than  by  any 
labor  legislative  protective  practices  or  policy. 

George  Kerschensteiner,  the  director  of  the 
Munich  schools,  in  his  book  on  "The  Idea  of  the 
Industrial  School,"  tells  us  that  the  Purposes 
and  Duties  of  the  schools  are  to  realize  the  ideal 
ethical  community,  and  that  this  realization 
is  possible  in  so  far  as  the  educational  provis- 
ions are  made  from  the  standpoint  of  the  ethi- 
cal concept  of  each  state.  In  America  we  do 
not  think  of  the  state  as  the  embodiment  of  our 
ethical  concepts.  The  state,  as  we  know  it, 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  73 

is  one  of  the  several  instruments  for  realizing 
ends,  ethical  as  well  as  material.  The  state  is 
supposed  to  serve  the  common  ends  of  all  peo- 
ple. A  state  may  be  used,  we  are  all  aware, 
as  an  instrument,  either  by  Prussian  junkers 
or  American  business  men ;  either  may  capture 
a  state  to  serve  their  ends.  But  as  a  state  serves 
special  individuals  it  belies  its  professed  reason 
for  existence,  and  in  America  is  in  danger  of 
falling  from  grace,  so  far,  that  is,  as  the  com- 
mon people  are  concerned.  But  when  a  state 
stands  in  the  minds  of  a  people  as  the  embodi- 
ment of  their  ideals  as  it  has  in  Germany,  it 
must  for  its  own  purpose  spend  time  and  sub- 
stance in  purchasing  the  people's  confidence.  In 
assuming  the  place  of  guardian  it  must  of  neces- 
sity minister  to  the  physical  needs  of  the  people. 
If  it  retains  the  people's  confidence  in  its  guar- 
dianship, it  is  incumbent  on  it  to  pursue  this  pol- 
icy. It  is  incumbent  on  such  a  state  to  mould  the 
people's  ideas  of  what  their  needs  are.  The 
schools  obviously  offer  the  most  hopeful  media 
for  the  accomplishment  of  that  result,  and  they 
have  been  used  in  Germany  more  effectively  in 
this  way  than  the  schools  of  any  other  country. 
The  German  school  system  follows  hard  and 
fast  preconceptions  of  aims  and  ends,  and  be- 


74    CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

cause  of  this  it  was  possible  for  Germany  to 
put  over  its  own  particular  sort  of  efficiency. 

As  a  first  requisite  of  efficiency,  Germany  class- 
ifies its  people,  gives  them  a  place  in  the  scheme 
of  things,  and  holds  them  there.  By  circum- 
scribing within  definite  limitations  the  experi- 
ence of  individuals  it  produces  specialists  at  the 
sacrifice  of  a  larger  human  development.  The 
classification  of  the  people  and  the  training  of 
them  naturally  for  the  German  purpose  falls  to 
the  schools.  The  sorting  out  of  individuals  be- 
gins at  the  early  age  of  ten  in  the  elementary 
schools,  when  each  child's  social  and  economic 
position  is  practically  determined.  It  is  decided 
then  whether  he  shall  be  one  of  the  great  army 
of  wage  workers  or  whether  he  shall  fall  into 
some  one  of  the  several  social  classes  and  voca- 
tions which  stand  apart  from  the  common  mass 
of  wage  earners.  The  children  in  the  German 
schools,  who  are  selected  at  the  age  of  ten  for 
a  more  promising  future  than  the  trades  hold 
out,  have  more  leeway  in  the  making  of  their 
decision.  But  even  these  children  from  the 
American  point  of  view  are  summarily  dis- 
posed of  and  fatally  consigned. 

The  telling  off  of  children  at  the  age  of  ten 
\     and  assigning  them  to  a  place  in  the  social 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  75 

scheme  for  life  is  not  American  in  spirit,  nor 
does  it  conform  to  our  habits  and  institutions. 
But,  it  is  complained,  the  American  habit  of  tak- 
ing chances  is  not  efficient.  The  habit  of  let- 
ting children  escape  into  life  with  their  place 
unsettled  creates  confusion  and  makes  calcula- 
tions in  serious  things  like  industry  difficult. 
Therefore,  unfaithful  to  the  development  of 
our  own  concepts  of  life  we  are  expected  to 
emulate  Germany  and  to  determine  the  destiny 
of  the  child.  Germany  undertakes  to  eliminate 
the  chances  of  the  individual  and  the  taking  of 
chances  by  the  state,  while  the  American  ideal 
is  to  leave  its  people  free  to  make  the  most  of 
each  new  exigency  that  life  turns  up. 

At  the  age  of  fourteen  it  is  decided  in  Ger- 
many what  industry  or  trade  the  children  shall 
enter,  that  is,  the  children  who  at  ten  are  told 
off  to  industry.  After  they  enter  their  trade, 
their  special  education  for  their  job  is  looked 
after  in  the  continuation  schools  as  well  as  in 
the  shop.  Their  attendance  at  the  continuation 
schools  is  compulsory.  This  compulsory  at- 
tendance does  not  only  insure  supplementary 
training  for  a  particular  job,  but  holds  the 
children  to  the  industry  which  was  chosen  for 
them.  That  is,  a  boy  is  compelled,  if  he  works 


76    CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

in  the  dining-room  of  a  hotel,  to  attend  the  con- 
tinuation school  for  waiters,  until  he  is  eight- 
een. He  may  not  go  to  a  continuation  school 
for  butchers  if  he  decided  at  the  end  of  a  year 
or  so  in  his  first  job  that  he  would  rather  be  a 
butcher,  or  that  he  would  rather  do  anything 
than  wait. 

The  continuation  schools  protect  German 
manufacture  and  the  national  industrial  effi- 
ciency against  indulgence  in  such  vagaries.  A 
butcher  would  prefer  to  engage  lads  who  have 
had  experience  in  butcher  shops  and  butcher 
continuation  classes.  Avenues  of  escape  from 
jobs  just  because  they  are  uncongenial  are  thus 
quite  effectively  closed  together  with  the  chance 
to  experiment  with  life — the  chance  which 
Americans  take  for  granted.  But  it  is  just  this 
element  of  waywardness  and  the  opportunity 
America  leaves  open  for  its  indulgence  among 
working  people  that  makes  labor  from  the  stand- 
point of  American  manufacture  so  inefficient. 
For  want  of  opportunity  to  put  individuality  to 
some  account  we  frequently  fall  back  on  way- 
wardness in  an  awkward  and  futile  protest 
against  domination. 

While  the  German  scheme  of  placing  its 
workers  is  efficient  in  its  own  way,  so  also  is 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  77 

the  training  for  each  particular  trade.  A  child 
is  trained  first  to  be  skillful  and  second,  to  quote 
Mr.  Kerch ensteiner,  "to  be  willing  to  carry  out 
some  function  in  the  state  ...  so  that  he  may 
directly  or  indirectly  further  the  aim  of  the 
state."  "Having  accomplished  this,"  he  says 
"the  next  duty  of  the  schools  is  to  accustom 
the  individual  to  look  at  his  vocation  as  a  duty 
which  he  must  carry  out  not  merely  in  the  in- 
terest of  his  own  material  and  moral  welfare 
but  also  in  the  interest  of  the  state."  From 
this,  he  says,  follows  the  next  and  "greatest 
educational  duty  of  the  public  school.  The 
school  must  develop  in  its  pupils  the  desire  and 
strength  .  .  .  through  their  vocation,  to  con- 
tribute their  share  so  that  the  development  of 
the  state  to  which  they  belong,  may  progress 
in  the  direction  of  the  ideal  of  the  community." 
His  assumption  in  defining  the  "greatest 
duty"  is  that  the  members  of  the  state  are  free 
to  evolve  and  will  evolve  a  progressive  ethical 
community.  But  after  a  child  has  passed 
through  the  hands  of  a  competent  teaching 
force  which  fits  him  successfully  into  a  ready- 
made  place,  after  he  has  accepted  this  ready- 
made  place  on  the  authority  of  modern  technol- 
ogy and  business,  on  the  authority  of  the  state 


78   CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

and  religion,  that  the  place  given  him  is  his  to 
fill ;  to  fill  in  accordance  with  the  standards  de- 
termined by  the  schools  and  by  industry — after 
all  this,  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  what  else  a 
child  could  do  but  conform.  He  could  do  no 
more,  thus  trained,  than  go  forward  in  the  di- 
rection he  is  pushed  and  in  the  direction  de- 
termined before  he  was  born.  This  is  not  our 
idea  of  a  progressive  life, 

It  has  been  understood  generally  in  America 
that  Germany's  preparation  and  classification 
of  her  future  workers  and  their  placement  in 
industry,  was  more  responsible  than  any  other 
policy  for  Germany's  place  in  the  world  market. 
British  and  American  manufacturers  before  the 
war  urged  the  emulation  of  German  methods 
of  education  and  a  reorganization  of  school  sys- 
tems more  in  conformity  with  the  German.  The 
demand  of  the  manufacturers  for  reorganiza- 
tion came  at  a  time  when  intelligent  educators 
in  America  were  recognizing  that  some  reorgan- 
ization was  necessary  to  bring  the  school  experi- 
ence of  children  into  relation  with  their  envir- 
onment and  with  the  actualities  of  life.  The 
industrial  education  movement  in  this  country 
was  based  on  the  German,  and  the  German  idea 
was  the  dominating  one.  The  movement  here 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  79 

has  shown  little  imagination  as  it  adopted  a 
system  foreign  to  America,  instead  of  initiating 
schemes  which  represented  the  aspirations  of  a 
free  people. 

Herman  Schneider,  of  the  University  of  Cin- 
cinnati, has  made  one  of  the  most  intelligent 
contributions  in  the  adaptation  of  the  German 
scheme  of  education.  He  divides  trades  into* 
two  classes,  which  he  calls  energizing  and  en-'v 
ervating.  In  those  which  are  energizing  there 
is  an  element  of  individual  expression  and  op- 
portunity for  self-direction.  The  enervating 
trades  are  wholly  automatic,  and  induce  a 
lethargic  state  of  mind  and  body.  His  comment 
on  the  situation  is:  "We  are  rapidly  dividing 
mankind  into  a  staff  of  mental  workers  and  an 
army  of  purely  physical  workers.  The  physical 
workers  are  becoming  more  and  more  lethargic. 
The  work  itself  is  not  character  building ;  on  the 
contrary,  it  is  repressive  and  when  self-expres- 
sion comes,  it  is  hardly  energizing  mentally. 
The  real  menace  lies  in  the  fact  that  in  a  self- 
governing  industrial  community  the  minds  of 
the  majority  are  in  danger  of  becoming  less 
capable  of  sound  and  serious  thought  because 
of  lack  of  continuous  constructive  exercise  in 
earning  a  livelihood." 


80  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

Professor  Schneider  undertakes  to  enrich 
this  barren  soil  by  alternating  the  time  of  pu- 
pils between  the  shop  or  store  and  the  school, 
thus  coordinating  the  worker's  experience,  with 
the  assistance  of  schoolmasters  who  go  into  the 
shops  and  follow  the  processes  the  pupils  are 
engaged  in  and  who  see  that  the  experience  of 
the  week  in  the  shop  is  amplified  and  supple- 
mented in  the  school.  The  arrangement  also 
provides  that  the  pupils  shall  be  taken  through 
the  various  shop  processes  in  the  course  of  ap- 
prenticeship. The  experience  while  it  lasts 
may  have  educational  value  for  the  pupil.  But 
in  spite  of  what  it  may  or  may  not  hold,  for  the 
general  run  of  pupils  it  leads  up  a  blind  alley 
because  the  apprenticeship  does  not  fulfill  the 
promise  which  apprenticeship  supposedly  holds 
out.  That  is,  the  pupil,  when  he  becomes  a 
worker,  will  be  thrown  back  into  some  factory 
groove  where  his  experience  as  an  apprentice 
cannot  be  used,  where  he  is  closed  off  from  the 
chance  to  develop  and  use  the  knowledge  or 
training  he  received.  If,  as  Dean  Schneider  as- 
serts, "we  are  rapidly  dividing  mankind  into  a 
staff  of  mental  workers  and  an  army  of  purely 
physical  workers,"  and  if  "we  cannot  reverse 
our  present  economic  order  of  things,"  then  any 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  81 

apprenticeship,  even  this  brave  effort  of  his,  is  a 
pseudo-apprenticeship  and  even  in  the  most  en- 
ergizing of  the  trades  leads  the  pupil  nowhere 
in  particular.  Even  the  skilled  trade  of  loco- 
motive engineering,  which  Dean  Schneider 
classes  as  the  most  highly  energized  of  trades, 
does  not  escape.  As  a  spokesman  for  the 
Brotherhood  of  Locomotive  Engineers  ob- 
serves :  ' '  The  big  electrical  engines  which  are 
being  introduced  in  the  railroad  system  are  rap- 
idly eliminating  the  factors  of  judgment  on  the 
part  of  the  engineer  and  transforming  that 
highly  skilled  trade  into  an  automatic  exer- 
cise." 

The  one-time  value  of  a  trade  apprenticeship 
to  a  youth  was  tha't  it  furnished  the  background 
for  mastery  of  machine  processes ;  but  appren- 
ticeship under  modern  factory  methods  can  do 
no  more  than  make  a  youth  a  good  servant  to 
machines.  The  Schneider  system  fills,  as  well 
as  can  be  filled,  a  scheme  of  apprenticeship  in 
conformity  with  the  prevailing  shop  organiza- 
tion and  requirements,  but  it  is  not  a  fulfill- 
ment for  youth ;  it  is  not  educational.  There  is 
no  progression  from  apprenticeship  to  indus- 
trial control;  no  chance  to  use  the  knowledge 
gained  where  opportunity  for  participation  in 


82  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

administration  and  reorganization  of  industry 
is  cut  off.  The  best  of  trades  is  a  blind  alley, 
educationally  speaking. 

However  abortive  such  an  effort  as  Dean 
Schneider's  might  be  in  giving  workers  oppor- 
tunity to  enrich  their  experience  for  their  own 
reconstructing  purposes,  it  offered  the  pupils 
more  content  and  better  training  than  the  or- 
dinary school  drill  in  its  colorless  and  vapid 
subject  matter.  This  fact  is  necessary  to  bear 
in  mind,  but  it  should  not  obscure  the  even  more 
significant  fact  that  the  blighting  character  of 
industry  is  due  to  its  motivation,  which  is  wealth 
exploitation  and  not  wealth  creation.  All  of 
the  industrial  educational  experiments  have  suc- 
cumbed to  the  fatalism  involved  in  the  adapta- 
tion of  their  experiments  to  that  fact. 

A  staff  of  investigators,  who  made  a  year's 
survey  of  the  industries  of  Cleveland  with  a 
view  of  determining  what  measures  should  be 
adopted  by  the  school  system  of  the  city  to  pre- 
pare young  people  for  wage  earning  occupa- 
tion and  to  provide  supplementary  trade  train- 
ing for  those  already  employed,  concluded  that 
the  choice  of  occupations  should  be  governed 
primarily  by  economic  considerations ;  that  even 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  school,  educa- 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  83 

tional  factors  could  not  take  precedence  over 
economic.  They  said :  *  *  The  primary  considera- 
tions in  the  intelligent  selection  of  a  vocation 
relate  to  wages,  steadiness  of  employment, 
health  risks,  opportunity  for  advancement,  ap- 
prenticeship conditions,  union  regulations  and 
the  number  of  chances  there  are  for  getting  into 
it.  These  things  are  fundamental,  and  any  one 
of  them  may  well  take  precedence  over  the 
matter  of  whether  the  tastes  of  the  future  wage 
earner  run  to  wood,  brick,  stone  or  steel." 

This  conclusion  is  fatalistic,  but  it  is  a  brave 
one.  It  does  not  fall  back  on  weak  substitutes 
for  reality;  it  does  not  throw  the  glamor  of  his- 
tory and  the  aesthetics  of  industry  around 
trades  with  the  poor  hope  that  they  make  up 
for  the  content  which  is  not  there ;  it  does  not 
foster  the  assumption  that  training  in  tech- 
nique of  industry  or  physical  science  can  en- 
rich, under  the  circumstances,  the  worker's  ex- 
perience to  any  important  extent.  It  accepts  the 
bald  truth  that  all  the  material  classed  as  cul- 
tural will  count  for  nothing  of  value  in  a  fac- 
tory worker's  life  in  comparison  with  the  high- 
est possible  wage  in  the  most  enervating  of  in- 
dustries. It  stresses  this  highly  important 
factor,  as  it  should,  but  merely  as  a  physical 


84  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTEY 

necessity.  There  is  vital  education  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  self-support,  in  the  consciousness 
that  one  is  earning  the  living  one  gets.  But 
under  present  conditions  the  educational  ex- 
perience of  wage  recompense  is  not  so  sig- 
nificant as  it  might  be  if  it  measured  the  value 
of  the  labor  performed;  if  it  paid  the  worker 
according  to  his  needs,  and  if  he  gave  in  return 
for  the  wage  according  to  his  ability. 

The  Gary  school  system  is  a  notable  effort  in 
public  school  education  to  fulfill  children's  de- 
sire for  productive  experience.  It  is  in  striking 
contrast  to  the  German  scheme  as  it  is  based  on 
processes  which  have  educational  force  and  sig- 
nificance. In  saying  this  I  differentiate  between 
training  for  industry  and  participation  in  the 
industrial  activity  which  is  an  organic  part  of 
the  life  of  the  children  and  of  the  community. 
The  children  are  an  actual  part  of  the  repair 
and  construction  working  force  on  Gary  school 
buildings  and  on  the  equipment.  As  the  chil- 
dren are  involved  in  the  upkeep  of  a  school  it 
becomes  their  school.  They  experience  the  re- 
sponsibility of  maintaining  the  school  plant, 
not  by  some  artificial  scheme  of  participation, 
but  by  the  actual  application  of  trade  standards 
and  acquired  technique  to  operations  which  have 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  85 

for  them  and  those  with  whom  they  live  impor- 
tant significance.  They  gain  in  their  work  a 
first  hand  knowledge  of  industrial  processes 
and  activity.  In  conjunction  with  skilled  me- 
chanics they  work  on  the  carpentry,  the  plumb- 
ing, the  masonry,  the  installation  of  electricity 
used  in  the  school  building.  They  do  the  school 
printing  and  accounting. 

The  children's  life  in  these  schools  is  an  ex- 
perience in  industry  where  there  is  nothing 
to  hide,  no  trade  secrets  to  keep  back.  The  chil- 
dren have  the  full  opportunity  of  seeing  their 
work  through  to  its  completion  and  under- 
standing its  purpose  and  recognizing  its  value 
and  use.  It  provides  more  than  any  other 
school  system  a  liberal  field  for  productive  en- 
deavor. But  the  Gary  schools  are  not  industry; 
they  are  a  world  apart ;  they  represent,  as  all 
schools  are  supposed  to,  moments  sacred  to 
education  and  growth.  They  are  not  subjected 
to  the  test  of  coordination  in  the  world  of  in- 
dustry. They  give  the  children  a  respect  for 
productive  enterprise  that  should  be  invalu- 
able later  in  effecting  their  resistance  to  the 
prostitution  of  their  creative  power.  They  do 
not  give  them  experience  in  the  administrative 
side  of  industry  for  which  the  children  of  high 


86  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

school  age  are  ready  and  in  need.  But  in  an 
admirable  way  they  subordinate  training  in 
technique  to  purpose  and  give  the  children  the 
experience  of  exercising  control  over  their  own 
industrial  activity.  As  an  industrial  experi- 
ence for  children  of  grammar  school  age,  it  is 
richer  than  any  other  school  system  which  has 
been  developed. 

The  industrial  education  of  Germany  which 
was  recommended  for  our  adoption  and  which 
we  have  emulated  to  an  alarming  degree  in  our 
industrial  towns,  imposes  prevailing  methods 
of  industry  and  technique  of  factory  processes 
as  final  and  determined.  As  industrial  history 
and  technique  are  taught  in  the  schools,  in  ef- 
fect they  bind  the  children  to  the  current  in- 
dustrial practice  and  to  the  current  conditions. 
They  stifle  imagination  and  discourage  the  con- 
cept that  industry  is  an  evolving  process.  The 
effect  of  technical  training  in  the  German  con- 
tinuation schools  (and  the  tendency  is  the  same 
in  our  own  industrial  education  courses)  is  to 
teach  the  children  that  the  methods  and  pro- 
cesses as  they  are  carried  forward  in  the  shop 
are  right.  No  question  of  their  validity  is  raised 
in  the  school.  They  are  accepted  by  the  chil- 
dren in  the  spirit  of  authority  which  the  school 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  87 

carries,  as  they  would  not  be  so  finally  accepted 
by  them  in  the  shop.  The  impress  of  a  devel- 
oped curriculum,  connected  with  an  active  trade 
experience,  that  is,  a  trade  in  which  the  children 
are  at  work,  like  the  curriculum  of  a  continua- 
tion school,  is  greater  than  the  curriculum 
which  has  been  evolved  for  its  abstract  cultural 
values.  As  the  curriculum  coordinates  shop 
and  school  activities  and  as  it  fails  at  the  same 
time  to  stimulate  inquiry  on  the  part  of  the 
pupil  into  industrial  or  special  trade  pro- 
cesses as  they  are  practiced  in  the  shop,  it  be- 
comes a  .positive,  inhibiting  factor  in  the  intel 
lectual  life  of  the  children.  The  perfection  of 
an  industrial  school  room  equipment  with  its 
trade  samples,  its  charts  and  maps,  its  litera- 
ture, relating  to  the  extension  of  trade  and  of 
commerce,  has  the  tendency  like  the  curriculum 
to  impose  on  the  children  the  weight  of  accom- 
plishment, if  this  equipment  is  not  used  to  stim- 
ulate inquiry  and  experiment  in  industry  as 
the  ever  fresh  field  for  adventure  that  it  is.  But 
the  intention  of  these  industrial  schools  is  to 
train  the  children  in  the  acceptance  of  processes 
and  methods  which  are  established.  Nowhere, 
in  no  country,  has  this  intention  been  so  success- 
fully realized,  because  nowhere  has  it  been  so 


:1 


88  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

successfully  organized  as  in  Germany  through 
its  continuation  school  system.  And  nowhere 
as  in  Germany  are  the  people  so  successfully 
subjected  to  an  institutionalized  life  as  it  has 
been  worked  out  in  the  light  of  modern  tech- 
nology and  business. 

There  are  other  and  special  reasons  why  the 
best  of  industrial  education  experiments  in 
America  have  not  met  with  greater  hospitality. 
The  average  American  parent  still  believes 
that  a  boy  "rises"  in  the  industrial  world,  not 
as  they  once  thought  through  his  ability  as  a 
workman.  The  men  of  their  acquaintance  who 
have  been  successful,  have  attained  wealth  and 
position,  not  as  a  rule  through  their  mastery  of 
technique  or  their  skill  in  a  trade;  they  have 
not  come  by  their  promotion  merely  on  account 
of  good  workmanship,  but  through  influence. 
It  might  be  that  they  had  had  their  "chance" 
through  a  relative  or  successful  business  man, 
or  it  might  be  that  they  "got  next"  to  a  poli- 
tician, who  required  no  other  qualification  than 
"smartness."  A  boy  in  a  telegraph  or  a  law- 
yer's office  has  a  better  opportunity  to  reach 
influence  than  a  boy  in  a  workshop.  The  scholas- 
tic requirement  for  such  advancement  as  these 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  89 

vocations  contemplate,  is  provided  for  in  the 
established  school  program  of  the  lower  grades. 
A  certain  display  of  a  few  historical  and  liter- 
ary facts  beside  a  facility  in  reading,  writing, 
and  arithmetic  are  the  qualifications  which 
average  parents  believe  are  the  necessary  ones 
for  their  children's  advancement.  And,  taking 
the  situation  in  general  as  it  is,  they  are  right, 
and  will  be  as  long  as  the  whole  social  system 
discounts  productive  effort  and  rewards  ex- 
ploitation of  productive  enterprise. 

Obviously  false  from  an  educational  point  of 
view  as  these  school  standards  are,  they  are  true 
to  the  facts,  to  the  actual  situation  which  the 
parents  have  to  face.  The  wave  of  popular  op- 
position to  a  reorganization  of  the  schools  for 
a  preparation  of  the  children  for  factory  life 
expresses  the  original  conception  of  popular 
education  among  sovereign  people.  The  com- 
mon school  system  exists,  it  is  still  assumed, 
to  fit  the  children  to  rule  their  own  lives ;  to  give 
them  an  equipment  which  will  protect  them  from 
a  servitude  to  others.  Its  ability  to  do  this  had 
not  been  questioned  a  generation  ago  and, 
theoretical  as  its  original  intention  is  to-day, 
its  traditional  purpose  to  develop  the  power  of 
each  child  to  govern  his  destiny,  holds  over. 


90  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

If  training  children  to  read,  write  and  count, 
training  them  in  facts  relating  to  history  and 
language,  did  not,  as  it  had  been  hoped,  lay  the 
world  at  the  feet  of  the  children,  training  them 
in  factory  processes,  parents  felt  competent  to 
declare,  laid  the  children  at  the  feet  of  exploi- 
ters. That  is  where  in  any  case,  in  the  light  of 
common  experience,  they  might  expect  them  to 
land.  To  reorganize  the  schools  with  that  pos- 
sibility in  mind  was  for  the  parents  a  surrender 
of  their  gambling  chance. 

The  promoters  of  industrial  education,  with 
some  success,  have  made  it  clear  to  the  com- 
munity generally  that  parents  were  giving 
heavy  odds  in  their  gamble,  but  these  promoters 
would  have  made  this  more  obvious  to  parents 
if  they  could  have  shown  that  the  assets  accru- 
ing from  the  new  school  curriculum  increased 
more  materially  than  has  the  wage  earn- 
ing capacity  of  their  children.  The  results  for 
individual  children  are  not  sufficiently  striking 
to  advertise  the  departure,  and  if  they  were,  the 
departure  would  not  warrant  the  endorsement 
of  the  community  on  the  ground  of  the  higher 
wage,  as  wages  are  fixed  by  competition.  They 
are  advanced  by  a  general  increase  in  produc- 
tivity. But  the  increase  that  occurs  through 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  91 

more  efficient  methods  in  productive  enterprise 
is  not  a  real  increase ;  it  does  not  relatively  af- 
fect the  social  or  economic  position  of  the  wage 
earner. 

In  the  last  analysis,  the  wage  return  is  not 
an  educator's  criterion,  in  spite  of  the  prag- 
matic recommendation  of  the  Cleveland  Sur- 
very.  The  Survey's  recommendation  for  a  re- 
organization of  the  school  system  is  based  on 
the  belief  that  the  school  is,  or  should  be,  an 
integral  expression  or  reflection  of  the  life  of 
the  community ;  that  to  function  vitally  it  must 
be  contemporaneous  with  that  life,  as  are  all 
serviceable  institutions.  As  a  school  reflects 
the  life  of  a  community  it  enriches  the  experi- 
ence of  the  children  and  endows  them  with  the 
knowledge  and  power  to  deal  with  environment. 
"When  a  school  system  disregards,  as  our  es- 
tablished system  does,  the  entire  reorganization 
of  the  industrial  world,  it  stultifies  growth  and 
cultivates  at  the  same  time  an  artificial  concept 
of  life,  a  false  sense  of  values.  The  German 
system  of  industrial  education  has  recognized 
the  reorganization  of  the  industrial  world,  but 
this  recognition  has  meant  the  sacrifice  of  in- 
dividual life  and  development;  it  has  come  to 


92  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

mean  in  short  the  prostitution  of  a  people  and 
the  creation  of  a  Frankenstein. 

None  of  our  industrial  educational  systems 
or  vocational  guidance  experiments  disclose  the 
full  content  of  the  industrial  life  nor  do  they 
give  the  children  the  knowledge  or  power  to 
deal  with  it.  The  general  dissatisfaction  with 
these  school  movements  is  that  they  neither 
prostitute  the  schools  in  the  interest  of  the  em- 
ployers nor  endow  the  children  with  power  to 
meet  their  own  problems.  The  training  in  tech- 
nique which  they  supply  has  a  bearing  on  the 
every  day  life  around  them  which  stories  of 
Longfellow's  life  have  not.  But  that  technique, 
divorced  as  it  is  from  its  purpose,  its  use  or 
final  disposition,  is  as  valueless  as  a  crutch 
for  a  man  without  arms.  An  elaboration  of 
technology  through  instruction  in  the  general 
principles  of  physical  science,  industrial  and 
political  history  and  the  aesthetics  of  industry 
only  emphasizes  the  absence  of  the  really  sig- 
nificant factors.  The  conspicuously  absent  fac- 
tors in  all  industrial  educational  schemes  are 
those  which  give  men  the  ability  to  control  in- 
dustry. No  work  in  subject  matter  is  educa- 
tional which  does  not  in  intention  or  in  fact  give 
the  person  involved  the  ability  to  participate 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  93 

in  the  administration  of  industry,  or  the  ability 
to  judge  the  extent  of  his  mastery  over  the  sub- 
ject. Industrial  educational  schemes,  even  the 
best  of  them,  leave  the  pupils  helpless  before 
their  subject.  As  they  furnish  them  with  a  cer- 
tain dexterity  and  acquaintance  with  processes 
and  a  supply  of  subject  matter  necessarily 
more  or  less  isolated,  the  pupils  gain  a  sense 
of  the  power  of  the  subject  to  control  them, 
rather  than  an  experience  in  their  power  to 
master  the  subject.  The  industrial  school  em- 
phasizes the  fact  that  the  administration  and 
disposition  of  wealth  production  is  no  concern 
of  those  versed  in  the  technique  of  fabrication. 

Many  educators  appreciate  the  lack  of  con- 
tent provided  by  industrial  school  systems  as, 
with  weak  emphasis,  they  undertake  to  embroi- 
der the  system  with  history  and  aesthetics  of 
textiles  or  other  raw  material  which  the  work- 
ers handle,  or  introduce  the  story  of  past  proc- 
esses. As  this  furbishing  of  impoverished  in- 
dustry fails  dismally  to  add  content,  it  succeeds 
in  emphasizing  the  actual  poverty  that  exists. 

Dr.  Stanley  Hall  makes  the  suggestion  that 
books  on  the  leading  trades  should  be  written 
to  stimulate  the  interest  and  intelligence  of  the 
young  who  are  engaged  in  industry  or  prepar- 


94  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

ing  to  become  the  wage  earners  of  the  trades. 
In  speaking  of  "the  urgent  necessity  now  of 
books  on  the  leading  trades  addressed  to  the 
young,"  he  says:*  "The  leather  industry, 
particularly  boot  and  shoe  manufacture,  is  per- 
haps the  most  highly  specialized  of  all  in  the 
sense  that  an  operator  may  work  a  lifetime  in 
any  one  of  the  between  three  and  four  score 
processes  through  which  a  shoe  passes  and  know 
little  of  all  the  rest.  Now  the  Shoe  Book  should 
describe  hides  and  leathers,  tanning, — old  and 
new  methods,  with  a  little  of  the  natural  history 
of  the  animals,  describe  the  process  of  taking 
them,  of  curing  and  shipping,  each  stage  in  the 
factory,  designating  those  processes  that  re- 
quire skill  and  those  that  do  not,  and  so  on  to 
packing,  labeling  and  shipping,  with  descrip- 
tions showing  the  principles  of  the  chief  ma- 
chines and  labor-saving  devices,  at  any  rate 
so  far  as  they  are  not  trade  secrets;  it  should 
include  a  glance  at  markets,  prices,  effects  of 
business  advance,  depression  and  strikes,  per- 
haps something  about  the  hygiene  of  the  foot, 
about  bootblacks  and  what  is  done  for  them, 
history  of  the  festivals  and  organizations  from 
St.  Crispin  and  the  guilds  down,  tariffs,  syn- 

*  Stanley  Hall,  Educational  Problems;  p.  624. 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  95 

dicates,  societies,  statistics,  social  conditions 
in  shoe  towns,  nationality  of  operatives, — all 
these  could  be  concisely  set  forth  to  show  the  di- 
mensions, the  centers  of  interest,  the  social  and 
commercial  relations  of  the  business,  etc.  What 
is  not  yet  realized  is  that  all  these  things  could 
and  should  be  put  down  in  print  and  picture, 
almost  as  if  it  were  to  be  issued  as  a  text-book 
or  a  series  of  them;  all  of  this  could  be  done 
to  bring  out  the  very  high  degree  of  culture 
value  now  latent  in  the  subject.  Just  this  is 
what  pedagogues  do  not  and  will  not  see,  and 
what  even  shoe  men  fail  to  realize ;  viz.,  that  the 
story  of  their  craft  rightly  told,  would  tend  to 
give  it  some  degree  of  professional  and  human- 
istic interest  and  dignity  which  the  most  un- 
skilled and  transient  employee  would  feel.  It 
would  foster  an  esprit  de  corps,  pride  in  mem- 
bership and  above  all  an  intelligent  view  of  the 
whole  field  that  would  make  labor  more  valu- 
able and  more  loyal.  This  material,  once  gath- 
ered, should  be  used  in  some  form  in  all  in- 
dustrial schools  and  courses  in  towns  where 
this  industry  dominates.  It  would  bring  a 
wholesome  sense  of  corporeity,  historic  and 
economic  unity,  would  give  a  touch  of  the  old 
guild  spirit  and  more  power  to  see  both  sides  on 


96  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

the  part  of  both  employers  and  workmen.  Noth- 
ing is  so  truly  educational  in  the  deepest  psy- 
chological sense  of  that  word  as  useful  informa- 
tion vitalized  by  individual  and  vocational  in- 
terest." 

Dr.  Hall's  idea  of  a  Book  of  Industry  might 
have  emanated  from  the  heart  of  Mr.  Carnegie. 
With  the  same  benign  detachment  he  seems»  to 
have  mused  at  his  desk  about  the  shoe  industry 
and  the  people  engaged  in  it.  It  would  not  take 
more  than  a  passing  acquaintance  with  the  girls 
and  men  in  shoe  manufacturing  towns  to  know 
that  if  there  was  established  a  village  library 
equipped  with  the  history  of  shoes,  the  aesthe- 
tics of  shoes,  shoe  economics,  shoe  technology, 
and  shoe  hygiene,  not  one  of  the  girls  or  men 
who  worked  in  the  shoe  factories  would  darken 
its  doors  to  read  about  shoes.  They  would  not 
for  this  simple  reason:  the  workers'  "individ- 
ual and  vocational  interest "  does  not  exist. 
They  would  say  that  they  already  knew  more 
than  they  cared  to  about  shoes.  No  literature 
could  add  culture  or  dignity  to  the  job  of  stitch- 
ing vamps  for  all'the  working  hours  and  days  of 
a  wage  earner's  year,  while  there  is  no  experi- 
ence of  cultural  value  in  the  occupation,  divided 
as  the  making  of  a  shoe  is  into  some  ninety 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  97 

operations,  and  distributed  among  ninety  work- 
ers. Dr.  Hall's  suggestion  that  a  Shoe  Book  be 
written  is  a  good  suggestion  but  he  must  supply 
a  better  basis  for  a  reader's  interest  than  indus- 
try has  given  him,  that  is,  industry  as  it  is  now 
administered.  He  cannot  impose  culture  or  dig- 
nity through  books  on  a  trade  which  is  prosti- 
tuted by  business  for  profiteering.  If  the  pur- 
pose of  the  Shoe  Book  was  to  create  the  glamor 
that  was  intended  around  the  present  day  ar- 
rangement of  making  shoes,  it  would  be  a  false 
contribution  in  schoolroom  equipment ;  it  would 
be  as  pernicious  as  other  literature  that  intro- 
duced an  artificial  note  into  a  real  and  living 
experience  like  industry. 

The  most  romantic  account  of  shoe  making 
will  do  nothing  to  bridge  the  gulf  between  capi- 
tal and  labor  as  Dr.  Hall  seems  so  confidently 
to  believe  it  should.  The  problem  is  not  so  sim- 
ple or  so  easily  disposed  of.  As  Dr.  Hall  him- 
self says:  "As  long  as  workmen  are  regarded 
as  parts  of  the  machinery  to  be  dumped  on  the 
scrap  heap  as  soon  as  younger  and  stronger 
hands  can  be  found,  the  very  point  of  view 
needful  for  the  correct  solution  of  vocational 
education  is  wanting."*  Dr.  Hall  recognizes 

*  Stanley  Hall — Educational  Problems,  p.  632. 


98  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

some  evils  which,  are  inherent  in  the  present 
scheme  of  industry  and  which  are  antagonistic 
to  growth,  but  neither  he  nor  any  of  the  ad- 
vocates of  the  German  methods  of  industrial 
education  make  provisions  in  their  educational 
schemes  for  eliminating  the  aspect  which  con- 
templates the  dumping  of  workers  on  scrap 
heaps.  None  of  the  advocates  view  the  equip- 
ment of  workers  for  industry  in  terms  radically 
different  from  the  terms  in  which  they  are 
viewed  by  business  men;  they  offer  them  tech- 
nique and  matter  of  insignificance  and  indirec- 
tion ;  they  make  no  suggestion  or  move  to  open 
up  the  adventure  of  industry  for  the  worker's 
actual  participation  in  it;  they  accept  the  or- 
ganization of  industry  which  excludes  their 
participation  as  an  unalterable  fact;  even  un- 
alterable as  an  experience  in  the  prevocational 
schemes  of  education. 

National,  state  and  local  campaigns  have  been 
carried  on  in  America  during  the  last  fifteen 
years  for  the  protection  of  childhood  and  youth. 
They  have  been  on  the  whole  successful  in  their 
purpose  to  get  children  out  of  factories  and 
stores  and  into  schools.  It  was  an  embarrass- 
ment to  the  pioneers  in  the  campaign  to  find 
that  the  children  were  against  them;  that  they 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  99 

preferred  factory  or  commercial  life  to  the 
schools.  The  evidence  of  this  preference  was 
their  wholesale  exodus  from  schools  when  they 
reached  an  age  where  they  were  acceptable  to 
employers  or  where  they  were  not  prevented  by 
law.  Back  of  the  exodus,  universal  as  it  is,  there 
is  an  urge  of  elemental  force.  A  common  ac- 
counting for  it,  the  nearest  at  hand,  is  that  par- 
ents of  working  class  children  are  penurious; 
or  that  they  are  too  ignorant  to  understand  the 
deteriorating  effect  of  factory  life  on  children ; 
or  that  they  are  too  hard  pressed  in  their  physi- 
cal needs  to  consider  the  best  interest  of  the 
children.  This  reason  given  for  the  failure 
of  the  schools  to  supply  children  with  matter  of 
interest  or  significance  to  them,  explained  only 
why  children  did  not  want  to  stay  in  school;  it 
did  not  explain  their  eagerness  to  enter  in- 
dustry. None  of  the  reasons  accounted  for  the 
zest  of  the  children  for  wage  earning  occupa- 
tion. 

The  failure  of  the  schools  to  hold  the  children 
gave  educators  who  recognized  the  artificial 
character  of  school  curricula,  their  best  reason 
for  introducing  matter  relating  to  industrial 
life.  The  children's  preference  was  indeed  a 
valuable  indication  where  reality  or  real  sub- 


100  CREATIVE  .IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

jeot  matter  would  be  found.  The  change  off 
from  old  school  subject  matter  to  instruction  in 
methods  of  industry  was  a  logical  experiment. 
But  the  movement  for  industrial  education  was 
not  inspired  by  a  watchful  sympathetic  obser- 
vation of  children's  needs;  it  was  in  line  with 
the  general  theory,  more  or  less  accepted,  that 
schools  should  be  a  reflection  of  the  children's 
environment;  it  was  in  line  with  the  demand 
of  employers  for  efficient  workers  either 
equipped  for  specific  processes  or  adaptable  to 
factory  methods. 

If  the  promoters  of  industrial  education  had 
been  observers  of  children  from  twelve  to  four- 
teen and  sixteen  years,  they  would  have  found 
that  as  they  left  school  they  were  eager  not  for 
skill  in  technical  processes,  not  for  wages,  not 
for  greater  freedom  of  association  in  adult  life, 
not  for  any  of  these  alone,  but  for  all  of  these 
as  they  were  a  part  of  the  adventure  of  the 
adult  world  in  which  they  lived.  ' ( We  have  neg- 
lected to  study  the  most  vital  thing  in  the  situa- 
tion, namely  the  zests  of  the  young  ...  we 
have  not  taken  account  of  the  nature  of  the 
great  upheaval  at  the  dawn  of  the  teens,  which 
marks  the  pubescent  ferment  and  which  re- 
quires distinct  change  in  the  matter  and  method 


THE  GERMAN  WAV*-' ^       '<iO*l 

of  education.  This  instinct  is  far  stronger  and 
has  more  very  ostensive  outcrops  than  in  any 
other  age  and  land,  and  it  is  less  controlled  by 
the  authority  of  school  or  the  home.  It  is  a  pe- 
riod of  very  rapid^  if  not  fulminating  psychic 
expansion.  It  is  the  natal  hour  of  new  curiosi- 
ties, when  adult  life  first  begins  to  exert  its 
potent  charm.  It  is  an  age  of  exploration,  of 
great  susceptibility,  plasticity,  eagerness,  per- 
vaded by  the  instinct  to  try  and  plan  in  many 
different  directions."* 

Children  of  this  adolescent  time  would  re- 
spond more  readily  to  school  instruction  re- 
lated to  the  adult  activities  which  held  their 
interest  and  connected  in  some  way  with  their 
own  conception  of  their  functioning  in  the  adult 
world.  Courses  of  study  in  processes  of  in- 
dustry and  practice  in  the  technique  of  those 
processes  would  have  actual  bearing  on  the  en- 
vironment of  which  they  were  eager  to  be 'a 
part. 

But  instruction  in  mechanical  processes  and 
practice  in  technique  of  manufacture  are  the 
husks  of  industry  when  divorced  from  the  plan- 
ning, the  management,  the  examination  of  prob- 
lems, the  determination  of  the  value  of  goods  in 

*  Stanley  Hall— Education  Problems,  pp.  544-545. 


IN  INDUSTRY 

their  use  and  in  their  place  in  the  market,  the 
division  of  labor  throughout  an  enterprise,  the 
relation  of  all  persons  involved  to  each  other 
and  to  the  product.  The  schools  with  their  in- 
dustrial education  courses  do  not  undertake  > 
to  supply  their  young  people  with  an  opportun- 
ity to  plan ;  they  are  true  reflections  of  factory 
existence  as  they  eliminate  all  the  adventure  of 
industry,  the  opportunity  for  experiment  and 
discovery;  they  do  not  satisfy  the  high  impulse 
of  young  people  to  be  of  use,  to  be  a  part  of  the 
world  of  work.  The  spirit  of  the  schools  is 
preparation  for  something  to  come;  the  spirit 
of  the  children  is  in  the  present,  and  the  pres- 
ent pressing  impulse  of  adolescence  is  to  share 
adult  responsibilities. 

The  impulse  of  youth  to  take  its  place  in  adult 
life  is  exploited  by  industry  and  repressed  or 
perverted  by  a  system  of  education  which  fits 
the  children  into  a  system  of  industry  without 
giving  them  the  insight  and  power  to  effect 
adjustments.  The  actual  job  in  a  trade  has  sat- 
isfying features  which  the  school  lacks.  It 
pays  wages.  That  fact  for  eager  children  is  es- 
timated beyond  its  purchasing  power.  For 
them  it  is  an  acknowledgment,  a  very  real  one, 
that  they  have  been  admitted,  are  wanted  in  the 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  103 

big  world  where  they  are  impelled  by  their  psy- 
chic needs,  to  enter.  It  places  them  more  nearly 
on  an  equality  with  the  older  members  of  their 
family  and  entitles  them  to  consideration  which 
was  not  given  them  as  dependent  children. 
They  learn  shortly  of  how  little  account  they 
are  to  the  boss  employer  but  they  are  establish- 
ing all  the  time  a  new  basis  of  contact  and  a  new 
place  in  their  personal  relations;  they  are  es- 
tablishing it  because  they  have  economic  value 
in  the  world  outside  of  home  as  well  as  in  it. 
The  industrial  schools  and  the  old  type  of 
schools  are  both  adult  schemes  of  getting  chil- 
dren ready  for  adult  life,  not  by  experiencing 
it,  but  by  doing  certain  things  well  so  that  they 
can  be  entrusted  to  do  later  on,  what  adults  in 
their  wisdom  have  decided  that  they  are  to  do. 
But  they  fail  to  prepare  children  for  the  future 
as  they  fail  to  supply  the  children's  present  ur- 
gent needs.  They  use  the  period  for  ulterior 
purposes;  purposes  ulterior  to  the  period  of 
growth  with  which  they  are  dealing.  As  they 
use  this  period  for  another  time  than  its  own, 
in  effect  they  exploit  it.  Without  consciousness 
of  the  fact  so  far  as  the  children  are  concerned, 
the  schools  exploit  this  period  of  growth  as  ef- 
fectively as  the  employers  reap  the  profits  of 


104  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

child  labor.  Employers  as  beneficiaries  have 
more  reason  than  the  schools  for  diverting  youth 
from  its  own  purposes,  as  they  are  under  the 
necessity  of  a  price  system  which  is  competi- 
tive. The  schools  as  well  as  industry  use  up 
the  placticity  of  youth ;  they  kill  off  the  eager- 
ness of  children  to  explore  and  plan,  and  cast  it 
aside  for  more  consequential  ends. 

The  consequential  ends  in  America,  we  have 
seen,  have  been  less  clearly  defined  than  in  Ger- 
many. Within  a  year,  the  United  States  has 
become  conscious  as  a  nation  of  place  and  power, 
conscious  that  it  is  to  play  a  part  with  the  other 
states  of  the  world.  In  playing  this  part,  will 
it  retain  its  role  of  servant  of  the  people,  or  will 
it  assume  with  its  new  world  dignity  the  role, 
if  not  of  master,  then  of  leadership!  If  still 
servant,  will  it  serve  more  efficiently  than  it  has 
our  dominant  institution,  industry!  If  the  si- 
lent partnership  between  business  and  the  state 
is  strengthened,  will  not  the  promoters  of  in- 
dustry be  in  a  better  position  than  before  to 
appeal  through  the  state,  through  the  patriot- 
ism intensified  by  our  newly  acquired  world 
position,  for  a  more  universal  and  a  systema- 
tized adaptation  of  workers  in  industry!  The 
schools  in  their  disinterested  capacity,  disin- 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  105 

terested,  that  is,  in  the  profits  of  production,  it 
would  seem  could  be  used  most  effectively  to- 
ward this  end.  German  manufacture  made  that 
clear  to  American  manufacture  before  the  war. 
It  also  must  be  remembered  that  it  was  Prus- 
sian pride  for  imperial  position  that  inspired 
the  complete  and  efficient  surrender  of  the  Ger- 
man schools  to  the  needs  of  the  German  manu- 
facturers. 

America  is,  of  course,  ' '  different. ' '  All  peoples 
are.  But  so  is  our  position  in  the  world  dif- 
ferent from  what  it  was.  Our  position  is  not 
now,  nor  could  it  be,  the  German  position.  Our 
past  is  different,  and  that  will  continuously  have 
its  effect  on  our  future.  But  we  are  facing  a 
great  period  of  change,  and  the  strongest  forces 
in  the  country  are  the  industrial,  and  the  strong- 
est leaders  are  the  financiers.  What  the  finan- 
ciers and  industrial  managers  most  want  is 
efficient,  docile  labor.  The  German  system  of 
education,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  we  are  dif- 
ferent, might  conceivably  have  that  effect  on 
the  youth  of  this  country.  Under  the  pressure 
of  industrial  rivalry  after  the  war,  under  the 
pressure  of  an  imperial  industrial  policy,  it 
may  be  that  the  people  of  the  country  will  yield 
to  the  introduction  of  a  scheme  of  education 


106  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

which  it  has  been  proved  elsewhere  can  fit  chil- 
dren better  than  any  other  known  scheme  into  a 
system  of  mass  production. 

It  is  clear  that  industry  could  set  up  models 
of  behavior  more  successfully  in  the  name  of 
education  than  in  its  own,  and  to  the  extent 
American  children  come  up  to  these  models  the 
more  employable  they  would  be  from  the  stand- 
point of  business.  If  the  pressure  is  sufficiently 
strong  the  people  may  yield  to  the  introduction 
of  a  system  of  compulsory  continuation  schools 
similar  to  those  of  Germany.  If  they  do,  I  be- 
lieve they  will  eventually  fail.  But  there  is 
danger  through  loss  of  energy  and  loss  of  pur- 
pose in  their  introduction.  Is  it  impossible  for 
us  to  hold  to  our  native  experimental  habits  of 
life  and  attain  standards  of  workmanship?  Is 
/  it  possible  to  realize  the  full  strength  of  as- 
j  sociated  effort  and  at  the  same  time  advance 
\wealth  production? 

Germany's  industrial  supremacy  was  due,  as 
Professor  Veblen  shows,  to  the  fact  that  ma- 
chine industry  was  imposed  ready-made  on  a 
people  whose  psychology  was  feudal.  The 
schools  of  Germany,  an  essential  part  of  her 
industrial  enterprise,  were  organized  on  the 
servility  of  the  people.  We  now  know  what 


THE  GERMAN  WAY  107 

bnilding  as  Germany  has  built  her  educational 
and  industrial  system  on  the  weakness  of  a  peo- 
ple means.  We  are  in  the  process  of  discover- 
ing whether  in  sacrificing  the  expansion  of  her 
people  she  can  secure  a  permanent  expansion 
of  her  Empire.  It  would  seem  the  better  part 
of  statesmanship  in  America  after  the  war  to 
build  industrially  on  the  strength  of  our  people 
and  not  on  the  weakness  of  another.  It  is  the 
business  of  educators  to  point  out  the  danger 
and  to  discover  whether  efficiency  may  not  be 
gained  in  the  country  by  giving  children  in  their 
adolescent  period  the  impulse  for  production 
and  high  standards  of  work,  not  for  the  sake  of 
the  state,  but  for  themselves,  for  the  sake  of  the 
community, — out  of  love  of  work  and  for  the 
value  of  its  service. 


CHAPTER  IV 

EDUCATIONAL    INDUSTEY    AND    ASSOCIATED 
ENTEEPEISE 

As  capital  and  so  far  labor  have  failed  to 
make  industry  an  expansive  experience  it  be- 
comes, as  Professor  Dewey  has  pointed  out,  the 
business  of  educators  concerned  with  the  growth 
of  individuals  to  cultivate  the  field. 

If  educators  regard  opportunities  for  growth 
with  sufficient  jealousy  they  will  not  wait  for 
industry  to  emerge  with  a  new  program,  or  sys- 
tem of  production;  they  will  initiate  produc- 
tive enterprises  where  young  people  will  be  free 
to  gain  first  hand  experience  in  the  problems  of 
industry  as  those  problems  stand  in  relation  to 
their  time  and  generation.  Their  alliance  should 
be  made  with  engineers  and  architects  and  the 
managers  of  industry  who  have  made  them- 
selves, through  experience  and  training,  mas- 
ters of  applied  science  and  the  economics  of 
production.  Engineers,  not  under  the  influence 

108 


EDUCATIONAL  INDUSTRY         109 

of  business,  are  qualified  to  open  up  the  creative 
aspects  of  production  to  the  workers  and  to 
convince  them  through  their  own  experience 
that  that  there  are  adventurous  possibilities 
in  industry  outside  the  meagre  offerings  of  pay- 
day. Mr.  Robert  Wolf  is  one  of  the  engineers 
who  is  ready  for  the  venture.  He  told  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Taylor  Society  that ' '  scientific  man- 
agers have  not  been  scientific  enough  in  dealing 
with  this  very  important  subject  of  stimulating 
the  thinking  and  reasoning  power  of  the  work- 
man, thereby  making  him  self-reliant  and  crea- 
tive. ' '  In  describing  the  field  in  which  practical 
engineers  should  operate,  he  laid  stress  on  their 
giving  large  space  to  the  originating,  choosing, 
adapting  power  in  men  and  the  direction  of  it 
into  positive  constructive  channels;  to  men's 
self-consciousness  of  their  place  in  the  great 
scheme  of  things. 

This  conception  of  the  field  of  operation  for 
engineers  also  described  the  field  for  educators. 
The  latter  have  failed  to  seize  the  chance  in  the 
present  industrial  arrangement  for  the  devel- 
opment of  ' l  the  originating,  choosing  power ' '  in 
the  working  man  because  they  have  been  ob- 
sessed by  the  business  appreciation  of  the  work- 
ing man's  power  of  adaptation.  It  is  because 


110  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

they  labor  under  this  obsession  that  they  turn 
industrial  education  into  industrial  training 
whenever  they  include  industry  in  their  cur- 
ricula. Educators  know  that  there  is  adventure 
in  industry,  but  they  believe  that  the  adventure 
is  the  rare  property  of  a  few.  They  believe  this 
so  finally  that  they  surrender  this  great  field  of 
experience  with  its  priceless  educational  con- 
tent without  reserving  the  right  of  such  experi- 
ence even  for  youth.  They  know,  as  we  all  do, 
that  industrial  problems  carry  those  who  par- 
ticipate in  their  solution  into  pure  and  applied 
science;  into  the  market  of  raw  materials  and 
finished  products;  into  the  search  for  uncon- 
quered  wealth.  They  know  that  the  marketing 
of  goods  is  an  extensive  experience  in  the  world 
of  men  and  desires.  They  are  not  alone  in  their 
lack  of  courage  to  admit  that  limiting  this  ex- 
perience perverts  normal  desires  and  creates 
false  ones.  For  the  sake  of  education  it  is  to  be 
hoped  that  such  engineers  as  Mr.  Wolf  may 
overcome  the  timidity  of  educators,  and  that,  in 
conjunction  with  men  capable  of  productive  en- 
terprise, they  will  undertake  to  give  young  peo- 
ple an  experience  which  is  not  tagged  on  to 
industry  under  the  influence  of  profits,  but 
which  is  inspired  by  the  desire  to  produce  and 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE     111 

the    opportunity   to   develop    the   inspiration. 

Before  establishing  a  system  of  industrial 
education  like  Germany's,  or  extending  the 
makeshift  attempts  which  have  been  introduced 
here  in  the  United  States,  it  would  seem  well  to 
undertake  experiments  which  would  stimulate 
the  impulses  of  youth  for  creative  experience, 
which  would  give  them  an  industrial  experience 
where  the  motive  of  exploitation  is  absent  and 
where  the  stimulus  was  the  content  which 
the  production  of  wealth  offers.  Such  ex- 
periments would  entail  the  organization  of 
workshops  in  connection  with  schools  in 
which  the  workshop  experience  was  translated 
and  extended. 

Such  workshops  would  be  financed  inde- 
pendently of  the  schools.  They  would 
not  be  financed  on  a  basis  of  profits,  but 
the  capital  invested  would  draw  a  legal  rate  of 
interest.  The  enterprise  would  be  under  the  di- 
rection of  managers  competent  in  technological 
processes,  in  the  estimate  of  costs,  and  the  or- 
ganization of  the  work  on  a  basis  of  productive 
efficiency.  The  working  force  would  be  a  corps 
of  young  people  who  had  received  their  ele- 
mentary school  certificates  and  their  certificates 
for  employment  together  with  the  necessary 


112  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

complement  of  adult  workers  for  the  successful 
development  of  the  plant.  The  working  force 
would  be  paid  the  market  rate  of  wages.  The 
juvenile  members  of  the  force  would  be  paid  on 
a  half-time  basis  as  they  would  work  in  alter- 
nate shifts  in  the  shop  and  in  the  school,  so 
that  work  in  the  shop  would  be  continuous  and 
would  run  on  full  time.  The  exchange  of  shifts 
between  the  shop  and  school  would  occur  daily 
or  weekly  or  semi-weekly,  as  it  was  conducive 
to  the  health  and  the  intellectual  experience  of 
the  children  and  to  the  needs  of  production  in 
the  organization  of  the  shop. 

The  workshop  would  be  devoted  to  the  pro- 
duction of  some  marketable  article  or  articles 
which  are  simple  in  construction.  The  selection 
of  the  product  would  not  depend  upon  technical 
processes  of  construction  to  furnish  educational 
subject  matter.  Educationally  speaking,  the  ac- 
quisition of  technique  is  a  factor,  but  not  a  pri- 
mary one,  in  the  modern  scheme  of  production. 
The  primary  factors  are  those  which  have  uni- 
versal significance,  that  is  which  are  common  to 
all  industry,  the  relation  of  labor,  of  mechanical 
equipment,  of  raw  material,  of  the  finished 
product  to  the  whole  and  to  each  other;  the 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE    113 

relation  of  the  market  to  productive  effort  and 
an  effective  organization  of  all  of  these. 

The  technical  processes  or  their  acquisition 
are  of  educational  value,  because  they  furnish 
the  necessary  experience  for  the  evaluation  and 
appreciation  of  workmanship ;  or  would  furnish 
a  basis  for  such  a  valuation  if  the  educational 
factors  which  are  common  to  all  industry  were 
matters  in  which  all  the  workers  participated 
and  were  matters  which  they  understood.  It 
may  be  that  there  are  certain  mechanical  proc- 
esses which  have  universal  technical  significance 
and  on  that  account  would  have  special  educa- 
tional value,  but  even  if  those  processes  were 
determined  and  selected  for  industrial  instruc- 
tion and  acquisition,  it  would  not  imply  that 
those  who  acquired  them  were  industrially  edu- 
cated. They  would  be  industrially  equipped  to 
act  as  efficient  factory  attachments,  but  the  ac- 
quisition of  processes,  even  the  fundamental 
ones  we  have  had  ample  opportunity  to  dis- 
cover, do  not  inspire  creative  interests  and  de- 
sires. 

Because  educational  content  in  modern  fac- 
tory work  is  not  accessible  to  the  mass  of  work- 
ers, we  have  fostered  the  illusion  that  the  edu- 
cational subject  matter  of  industry  was  inherent 


114  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

in  the  technical  process  of  fabrication.  As  we 
have  fostered  this  illusion,  we  have  missed  the 
educational  principle  applicable  to  the  craft 
period,  as  well  as  to  the  present,  that  the  con- 
dition of  the  educational  requirement,  is  that 
workers'  participation  in  productive  enterprise 
coincide  in  the  long  run  with  creative  intention 
and  accomplishment.  This  central  requirement 
of  industrial  education  means  that  individuals 
learn  to  function  with  conscious  creative  inten- 
tion in  the  environment  in  which  they  live  and 
that  their  learning  furnishes  a  basis  for  critical 
and  informed  evaluations  in  industrial  activity. 
In  the  craft  period  the  creative  intention  re- 
quired the  worker's  mastery  over  every  process 
of  his  craft.  In  this  machine  age  of  associated 
enterprise  the  creative  intention  requires  the 
ability  to  associate  with  others  in  the  adminis- 
tration of  industry  as  well  as  to  take  the  place 
of  an  individual  in  the  routine  of  factory  work. 
For  the  reasons  I  have  just  stated  the  educa- 
tional experiments  I  am  suggesting  could  cover 
advantageously  one  of  the  many  industries 
which  are  generally  classed  as  unskilled,  and  al- 
most any  one  of  these  unskilled  routine  indus- 
tries would  serve  as  well  as  another.  Almost 
any  one  of  the  so-called  child  labor  industries 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE     115 

could  be  made  over  into  opportunities  for  young 
people  to  experience  the  stimulating  effect  of 
associating  with  others  in  a  productive  effort, 
and  gain  the  impetus  which  the  stimulation  sup- 
plied to  pursue  their  subject  matter  far  afield 
in  general  mechanics,  science,  economics,  geog- 
raphy, history  and  art. 

For  the  educational  purposes  of  the  experi- 
ment the  selection  of  the  industry  would  not 
be  made  on  the  ground  that  the  technical  proc- 
esses of  one  required  greater  intellectual  activ- 
ity than  another;  neither  would  the  selection 
depend  upon  whether  or  not  the  industry  chosen 
offered  young  people  better  chances  than  an- 
other for  entrance  to  a  trade  where  jobs,  com- 
paratively speaking,  drew  fair  rates  of  wages, 
or  the  economic  conditions  were  in  other  re- 
spects superior.  The  experiment  would  in  no 
sense  be  a  trade  preparation  but  an  experience 
where  the  enterprise  of  production  was  opened 
up  and  the  possibilities  of  creative  life  were 
realized  in  association  with  others,  so  far  as  the 
conditions  and  time  allowed. 

The  industrial  basis  for  selection  of  such  ex- 
periment should  hinge,  first,  on  whether  or  not 
the  young  people  could  function  in  the  industry 
advantageously  to  themselves  educationally 


116  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

speaking  and  to  the  industry  socially  consid- 
ered: that  is,  whether  or  not  the  productive 
processes  were  in  line  with  the  capacity  of 
adolescent  children  and  the  product  was  of  so- 
cial value;  second,  whether  the  product  could 
be  introduced  successfully  in  the  market  and 
the  enterprise  become  self-supporting. 

At  the  present  time,  a  proposition  for  the 
promotion  of  such  an  educational  experiment  is 
being  worked  out.  Wooden  toys  have  been 
chosen  as  the  article  for  manufacture,  because, 
first,  the  models  were  sufficiently  simple  in  con- 
struction to  make  the  work  practical  for  young 
people  who  make  up  the  work-shop  staff;  it  is 
practical  for  the  majority  of  the  staff  to  range 
in  age  from  14  to  17  years.  Second,  the  work 
done  by  Caroline  Pratt  on  children's  play- 
things has  disclosed  the  fact  that  the  present 
toy  market  is  below  grade  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  service  of  toys  to  children.  The 
market  does  not  supply  the  children  with  the 
sort  of  material  and  the  sort  of  tools  they  re- 
quire in  their  play  schemes.  Therefore,  the 
product  chosen  has  a  legitimate  social  claim 
on  the  market.  However,  it  would  be  valid, 
though  not  so  interesting,  if  a  certain  sort  of 
paper  box  which  filled  a  legitimate  trade  need 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE    117 

had  been  selected  and  a  paper  box  factory  had 
been  set  up  as  the  basis  of  the  experiment.  As 
a  theoretical  illustration  of  my  general  thesis, 
paper  boxes  would  serve  better  than  wooden 
toys,  because  the  latter  product,  as  it  is  con- 
ceived, covers  special  intellectual  content.  But 
the  particular  sort  of  content  is  not  a  funda- 
mental requirement  for  the  educational  purpose 
of  the  experiment.  However,  as  the  experiment 
is  actually  being  planned  in  connection  with 
wooden  toys,  I  shall  use  the  plan,  as  far  as  it  is 
worked  out,  as  my  illustration.  I  shall  refer 
later  in  discussing  the  school  curriculum  to  the 
special  intellectual  content  which  the  manufac- 
ture of  these  toys  will  represent. 

After  I  set  down  the  details  of  the  experi- 
ment, which  is  now  being  planned  for  a  work- 
shop and  school  concerned  with  the  production 
of  play  materials,  I  am  hoping  that  educators 
and  industrial  managers  may  readily  make  the 
application  to  other  lines  of  industry.  The  plan 
is  tentatively  confined  to  a  two  years'  course. 
It  may  be  found  that  two  years  is  too  long  a 
time  to  confine  the  pupils  to  the  work  and  the 
problems  of  the  shop.  It  may  be  found  in  the 
first  year  that  the  pupils  will  be  interested  in 
following  some  of  the  problems  not  in  relation 


118  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

to  their  work  and  in  that  case  they  would  break 
their  connection  with  the  shop. 

The  working  staff  of  the  Toy  Shop  will  in- 
clude forty  young  people  (twenty  at  work  at  a 
time  in  the  shop)  from  14  to  17  years  who  have 
received  their  working  certificates  and  have  left 
school  with  the  intention  of  going  to  work.  It 
will  include  also  six  or  seven  adults  who  will 
do  the  work  on  machines  too  heavy  or  unsafe 
for  children  to  handle  and  who  will  help  to  su- 
pervise and  direct  the  children  in  their  tasks. 
The  shop  itself  will  equal  the  best  of  shops  in 
point  of  equipment,  safety  and  sanitation.  It 
will  not,  however,  like  many  of  the  best,  elab- 
orate these  basic  features  in  ornamental  expen- 
ditures. The  shop  will  present  itself  to  the 
young  workers  as  sustaining  the  best  and  most 
essential  standards  in  use,  but  like  all  other 
problems  connected  with  the  shop,  the  best  will 
always  be  presented  as  a  temporary  achieve- 
ment which  with  sufficient  attention  can  be  im- 
proved. An  important  source  from  which  im- 
provements may  be  expected  is  the  staff  of 
workers  who  are  in  constant  contact  with  the 
plant.  In  other  words,  nothing  will  be  offered 
the  workers  in  the  spirit  of  final  achievement, 
and  the  suggestion  of  completeness  will  be 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE    119 

avoided.  The  opportunity  to  test  out  and  ap- 
preciate the  standards  will  occur  in  the  shop 
experience,  and  the  chance  to  achieve  or  ex- 
periment with  other  standards  will  be  reserved, 
as  I  shall  show  presently,  for  the  school  hours. 
This  will  be  the  case  with  methods  of  work  and 
with  shop  organization.  During  the  hours  in  the 
shop  the  workers  will  be  occupied  wholly  with 
their  special  tasks  as  they  would  be  in  any  other 
shop,  that  is  in  any  shop  which  had  due  consid- 
eration for  the  labor  force ;  as  much  considera- 
tion as  it  usually  has  for  the  economy  and  the 
protection  of  the  mechanical  force  would  be  con- 
siderable. 

The  workers  may  acquire  the  technique  of  all 
or  of  several  of  the  processes.  Their  general 
facility  in  technique  may  contribute  to  their 
productive  value  in  the  shop  or  their  mastery 
over  several  processes  may  have  its  educational 
value  for  them  in  relation  to  the  industry  as  a 
whole;  they  may  to  advantage  shift  from  one 
process  to  another  to  relieve  the  strain  of  rou- 
tine work.  For  the  sake  of  production  and  for 
the  sake  of  the  educational  value  to  the  workers, 
the  shifting  of  the  workers  from  one  process 
to  another  will  be  a  matter  of  experiment.  But 
the  workers  will  not  be  shifted  from  one  con- 


•  1 


120  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

•traction  process  to  another  for  the  sake  of 
learning  all  the  processes  because  skill  in  all 
the  processes  is  not  a  requisite  either  of  educa- 
tion or  production.  The  experience  in  the  ship- 
ping of  goods  and  in  the  handling  of  raw  ma- 
terials, in  the  installation  of  power,  in  the  up- 
keep of  the  equipment  and  the  general  care  of 
the  factory  will  be  participated  in  by  all  the 
workers  in  their  turn,  according  to  the  require- 
ments of  the  industry. 

While  there  will  be  adjustment  of  the  work- 
ers, and  trials  as  to  the  place  of  each  will  be 
made  in  the  shop,  intensive  experiments  in  shop 
organization,  like  other  shop  problems,  will  be 
carried  out  in  the  school.  This  arrangement 
will  serve  the  educational  and  the  productive 
purpose,  as  experimentation  should  not  be  lim- 
ited by  the  requirements  of  the  shop,  but  by  the 
requirements  of  industry  at  large.  The  school 
will  be  indeed  the  workshop  laboratory  where 
problems  which  originate  in  the  shop  can  be 
taken  over  for  analysis  and  solution.  These 
concrete  shop  problems  will  represent  required 
school  subjects  as  the  progress  of  the  shop 
and  the  success  of  the  enterprise  depend  upon 
their  solution. 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE    121 
Among  these  required  subjects  are: 

First:  The  Technical  Problems  of  Manu- 
facture, such  as  (a)  the  receiving  and  the 
storing  of  stock;  (b)  making  out  orders  for 
stock  from  shop  orders  and  bills  of  materials ; 

(c)  planning  operation  and  routing  work;  (d) 
standardizing  materials  and  simplifying  op- 
erations; (e)  the  elimination  in  loss  of  time 
in  waiting  for  material;  (f)  the  division  of 
labor;  (g)  advantages  and  disadvantages  of 
supervising  in  certain  operations;   (h)  ma- 
chine versus  hand  work  and  quantity  produc- 
tion; (i)  preparing  and  routing  shipments; 
(j)  making  out  bills  of  lading;  (k)  study  of 
friction,   loose  belts;    improper   oiling,   tool 
cutters  and  saws. 

Second:  Keeping  the  Financial  Accounts 
and  Estimating  Costs,  (a)  Making  out  bills  of 
materials;  (b)  calculating  costs  of  material 
from  bill ;  (c)  calculating  board  measure  and 
unit  cost  of  direct  labor  and  indirect  labor; 

(d)  calculations  of  power  used  by  each  unit 
of  machine  power;  (e)  calculating  pay  roll; 

(f)  making  out  business  forms,  such  as  bill- 
ing  goods,   invoices,   calculating   discounts; 

(g)  paying  bills  by  check,  note  and  draft; 


122  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

(h)  business  correspondence;  (i)  banking, 
depositing  money,  obtaining  money  on  notes, 
discounting  notes,  drawing  notes,  balances  of 
check  books  and  checking  up  cancelled  vouch- 
ers and  obtaining  bank  balances ;  (j)  time  and 
call  loans;  (k)  calculations  and  payment  of 
interest  on  capital;  (1)  maintenance  of  sink- 
ing fund. 

Third:  Up-Jceep  of  the  Working  Force, 
Buildings  and  Equipment,  (a)  Heating,  venti- 
lating and  lighting  of  the  factory  in  relation 
to  its  effect  on  the  workers;  (b)  valuation  for 
each  worker  of  his  own  physical  condition  ard 
expert  advice  in  regard  to  nutrition  and  other 
physical  needs;  (c)  care  of  motors  and  me- 
chanical equipment,  care  of  belts,  saws  and 
cutters;  (d)  efficient  installation  of  motors, 
sectional  drive  and  individual  drive;  (e)  dis- 
position of  sawdust,  etc.,  study  of  exhaust 
fans  and  construction  operation  and  function. 

Fourth:  The  Economics  of  the  Enterprise. 
(a)  The  market  of  the  raw  material — the 
study  of  the  market  in  relation  to  grades,  to 
cost,  to  transportation,  to  quantity  in  cost  of 
purchases,  to  time  of  purchase;  (b)  manufac- 
tured product;  selection  of  models  in  relation 
to  their  use  and  their  art  values ;  their  cost  of 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE    123 

manufacture;  relation  to  the  selling  price; 
the  relation  of  cost  to  quantity  and  quality; 
(c)  the  relation  of  the  rate  of  wages  paid  in 
the  shop  to  rates  paid  in  similar  industries, 
to  cost  of  production,  to  needs  of  the  work- 
ers; (d)  necessary  margin  of  income  over  ex- 
penses for  the  up-keep  of  the  plant,  for  its  ex- 
tension, for  the  maintenance  of  the  sinking 
fund  and  possible  contribution  to  the  ex- 
pense of  the  school ;  (e)  the  economic  value  of 
the  school  to  the  work  of  the  shop. 

Fifth:  Art  and  Service.  The  shop  will  not 
depend  upon  the  pupils  in  the  school  for 
models,  but  will  welcome  models  which  come 
from  the  pupils  as  evidence  that  the  shop  ex- 
perience is  a  stimulating  one.  But  it  will  be 
recognized  that  the  pupils  will  have  little  to 
offer  on  account  of  their  inexperience  and 
that  there  is  a  world  of  designers  from  whom 
to  draw  and  the  shop  is  eager  to  command  the 
best  models  which  are  obtainable.  There  will 
be  a  Jury  for  the  determination  of  models 
to  be  manufactured.  This  Jury  will  receive 
certain  instruction  on  the  subject  of  toys, 
and  will  be  responsible  for  making  further 
study  of  the  subject.  But  as  has  been  pointed 
out  for  the  last  ten  years  by  Caroline  Pratt, 


124  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

who  has  given  the  subject  scientific  attention, 
toys  are  the  tools  of  little  children  which  they 
use  in  their  effort  to  become  acquainted  with 
their  environment,  which  they  nse  in  schemes 
of  play,  and  which  are  in  fact  efforts  on  their 
part  to  try  out  and  experience  the  adult  life 
into  which  they  are  thrown. 

Because  this  is  true  and  the  market  is  un- 
supplied  with  toys  of  serious  value  to  chil- 
dren, the  subject  will  be  a  matter  for  devel- 
opment and  the  introduction  in  the  market 
of  models  which  will  serve  the  purpose  of 
children  in  their  play  will  be  considered  a 
matter  of  social  importance  and  demand  the 
serious  consideration  of  the  Jury.  This  Jury 
will  be  composed  of  the  workers  in  the  shop, 
the  manager  of  the  shop,  an  artist,  and  one  or 
two  people  who  have  given  the  subject  of  toys 
careful  attention.  Discussion  of  the  Toy 
Jury  on  submitted  toys  will  center  around, 
first,  the  value  of  the  toys  as  tools  to  the 
children  in  their  schemes  of  play,  and  second, 
around  the  art  value.  Both  these  points  will 
entail  much  examination  and  thought.  The 
first  will  involve  fundamentally  the  subject 
of  education,  and  the  second,  the  technique 
of  art  as  it  is  expressed  through  drawing, 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE    125 

color  and  design,  but  the  decision  in  regard 
to  models  for  manufacture  finally  can  not  rest 
on  either  of  these  fundamental  points.  It  will 
hinge  on  whether  or  not  the  models  selected 
are  practical  for  production  and  whether  they 
can  he  marketed  at  a  price  which  will  cover 
cost  of  manufacture. 

The  attention  of  the  pupils  will  be  directed 
to  the  factory  and  school  buildings  and  the 
importance  of  making  them  a  pleasant  work- 
place and  an  acquisition  to  the  neighborhood 
in  which  they  are  situated.  The  problem  of 
noise  from  machinery  and  dirt  and  dust  from 
fuel  will  be  taken  up  as  subjects  demanding 
generous  consideration. 

Sixth:  Literature  and  History.  Authentic 
accounts  and  inspirational  stores  of  indus- 
trial life,  especially  of  the  lumber,  the  wood- 
working, and  the  toy  industry  will  be  gath- 
ered by  the  pupils  and  the  teachers.  Special 
excursions,  investigations,  or  general  obser- 
vations casually  or  unexpectedly  made  by  the 
pupils  and  teachers  will  be  turned  to  liter- 
ary use  or  historical  record.  The  pupils  will 
be  given  full  opportunity  to  write  out  state- 
ments of  facts  they  have  discovered  or  to 
write  stories  or  plays  or  poetry  which  are  in- 


126  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

spired  by  the  subject  matter  they  have  gath- 
ered. These  literary  productions  will  not  be 
called  for  as  exercises  in  the  art  of  writing  or 
of  fact-recording,  but  as  contributions  toward 
the  equipment  of  the  school.  The  books 
which  are  collected  as  well  as  the  original 
compositions  will  be  submitted  to  critical 
analysis  and  accepted  as  accessions  to  the 
library  if  they  come  up  to  standards  in  au- 
thenticity and  in  literature.  The  teachers  as 
well  as  the  pupils  will  submit  new  books  or 
other  matter  and  before  they  are  accepted, 
they  will  be  subject  to  the  same  critical  analy- 
sis as  the  material  submitted  by  the  chil- 
dren. This  analysis  will  be  the  literary  ex- 
perience and  training  as  it  will  be  partici- 
pated in  by  all  the  pupils  who  are  interested 
in  this  expression  of  their  work. 

Not  all  of  this  school  work  is  incident  to  the 
success  of  the  shop,  if  we  measure  success  by 
usual  business  standards.  But  it  is  all  incident 
to  the  development  of  a  creative  impulse  in  the 
individual,  and  it  is  incident  to  the  development 
of  industry  as  a  socially  productive  enterprise. 
The  fact  that  the  school  and  shop  work  repre- 
sent the  planning  and  the  decisions,  that  they 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE    127 

demand  knowledge  and  experience,  does  not  sig- 
nify that  the  young  people  will  assume  to  carry 
more  responsibility  than  they  are  capable  of,  or 
that  more  will  be  expected  of  them  than  they 
are  equal  to.  It  does  not  mean  that  their  insuf- 
ficiency will  not  be  recognized  and  admitted. 
On  the  contrary  the  accumulated  knowledge  and 
experience  of  the  adult  workers  and  the  teach- 
ers will  be  appreciated  by  the  pupils  as  they 
have  the  chance  to  make  real  and  full  evalua- 
tions. All  the  members  of  the  staff  will  carry 
on  the  work  in  the  shop  as  producers  and 
learners  and  it  is  hoped  they  will  carry 
on  the  work  in  the  school  in  the  same 
spirit.  Young  people  will  stand  in  the  re- 
lation of  partners  as  well  as  pupils  to  the 
adults  associated  with  them.  If  the  school  and 
the  workshop  experience  gives  its  pupils  a  re- 
gard for  high  accomplishment  it  will  be  un- 
necessary to  stress  the  fact  that  as  responsible 
members  of  the  working  staff  the  learners  are 
not  on  a  footing  with  the  expert  workers.  The 
teachers  or  shop  managers  will  help  the  younger 
members  to  gain  the  knowledge  and  facility 
which  they  have  acquired  as  fellow  members  of 
an  enterprise  in  which  all  have  a  common  in- 
terest. The  participation  of  the  young  mem- 


128  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

bers  in  the  enterprise  will  be  great  or  small  de- 
pending upon  their  achievement  of  standards. 
For  instance,  in  the  case  of  office  work  whether 
the  individual  children  are  entrusted  with  the 
correspondence,  bookkeeping  or  banking,  will 
depend  upon  whether  or  not  they  have  achieved 
the  adult  standards  in  the  shop  for  such  busi- 
ness details.  But  standards  in  business  ac- 
counting, in  estimating  costs,  in  planning  oper- 
ations, and  in  technique,  will  not  be  maintained 
as  they  usually  are  in  industrial  schools  for  the 
sake  of  the  training,  but  for  the  purpose  of 
carrying  forward  successfully  the  actual  work 
with  which  the  shop  is  concerned.  While  the 
educational  experience  is  concerned  in  part 
with  appreciation  of  workmanship,  creative 
inspiration  in  modern  industry  will  never  be  a 
common  experience  until  the  workers  gain 
an  understanding  and  recognize  the  significance 
of  their  special  enterprise  in  relation  to  other 
industrial  enterprises  and  to  the  business  of 
wealth  production  as  a  whole. 

If  the  school  experience  is  educational,  the 
interest  of  the  pupils  in  subject  matter  will  not 
end  with  the  solution  of  their  shop  problems 
or  with  their  experience  in  industry.  The«above 
outline  of  tentative  school  subjects  representing 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE    129 

as  they  do  the  solution  of  the  problems  of  a 
specific  industry  signifies  merely  the  starting 
point  of  an  adventure  for  young  people  in  the 
serious  affairs  of  adult  life.  There  will  be  a 
large  margin  for  choice  in  the  election  of  sub- 
jects in  which  individual  children  will  care  to 
specialize  but  these  subjects  will  be  related  more 
or  less  directly  to  the  industry.  The  pupils 
will  doubtless  be  freer  in  the  second  year  than 
in  the  first  to  choose  where  they  want  to  spe- 
cialize as  they  will  have  had  time  in  which  to 
establish  their  ground  work. 

But  the  election  of  studies  in  a  two  years' 
half-time  course  will  not  admit  of  flights  very 
far  afield  of  the  subject  in  hand  and  of  the 
problems  originally  set  up.  Those  children 
who  find  that  their  participation  in  a  produc- 
tive enterprise  is  an  enriching  experience  may 
elect  to  follow  some  special  leads  in  science,  in 
the  past  and  present  history  of  manufacture 
and  commerce,  in  economics,  in  literature  or  in 
art.  The  intention  of  the  school  is  to  open  up 
opportunities  for  such  expansive  expressions  of 
the  concrete  experience  as  time  and  the  capacity 
of  the  pupils  admit,  provided  that  the  expres- 
sion has  its  valid  relation  to  the  promotion  or 


130  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

the  enrichment  of  the  enterprise  of  which  they 
are  responsible  members. 

Certain  pupils,  we  will  say,  will  elect  to  carry 
further  than  others  the  testing  of  fuel,  of  heat- 
ing and  ventilating.  Others  may  be  concerned 
with  experiments  in  power.  A  subject  pos- 
sibly will  become  of  such  absorbing  interest  to 
a  pupil  that  he  will  want  to  experiment  with 
the  one  he  elects  for  its  own  sake  and  without 
relation  to  the  problems  in  the  shop.  His  inter- 
est may  carry  him  into  pure  science,  unat- 
tached to  any  problem  in  hand.  In  such  cases 
the  pupil  should  be  given  a  chance  to  test  out 
his  interest;  he  should  be  placed  on  probation 
in  relation  to  his  elected  subject  and  if  his  inter- 
est holds  and  is  sufficiently  serious  he  will  be 
advised  to  give  up  the  school-shop  work  and 
follow  the  lead  his  interest  has  taken  in  some 
other  place  or  school. 

Indeed  the  value  of  the  experiment  will  rest 
on  discovering  whether  or  not  it  holds  the  in- 
terest of  the  pupils,  or  how  and  where  it  diverts 
it.  The  experiment  is  launched  on  the  assump- 
tion that  the  normal  adolescent  child  is  con- 
cerned with  the  responsibilities  of  adult  life; 
especially  it  is  assumed  that  he  is  concerned  to 
function  creatively,  to  associate  with  others  in 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE    131 

productive  work,  to  help  supply  such  funda- 
mental needs  as  the  housing,  feeding  and  cloth- 
ing and  the  pleasures  of  the  world  demand. 
It  is  assumed  that  the  desire  for  experience  in 
pure  science,  in  art  for  art's  sake,  comes  'before 
as  well  as  after  this  period  when  the  need  for 
social  contact  is,  it  is  again  assumed,  the  dom- 
inating emotion.  We  have  no  scientific  proof 
that  any  of  these  things  are  true,  but  we  have 
sufficient  evidence  to  justify  an  experiment. 

"Whether  or  not  it  is  possible  for  modern  in- 
dustry to  offer  young  people  a  proper  chance  for 
making  their  social  adjustments  is  also  a  ques- 
tion which  I  hope  this  experiment  may  help  to 
answer.  We  can  do  no  less  than  use  the  con- 
ditions of  industry  as  they  present  themselves 
to  us  as  our  basis  for  a  trial.  I  have  started 
with  the  belief  that  possibly  the  division  of  la- 
bor and  scientific  methods  of  management  if 
handled  by  the  workers  in  conjunction  with  en- 
gineers and  people  of  experience  can  be  made 
the  instruments  of  associated  life.  If  there  is 
ground  for  this  assumption  it  will  be  important 
to  induce  the  young  people  who  enter  the  school 
and  work  shop  to  give  their  industrial  experi- 
ence a  fair  trial  and  to  postpone  the  pursuit 
of  pure  science  or  art  for  its  own  sake. 


132  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

The  subject  matter  taken  up  in  this  school 
can  be  subjected  to  a  formal  school  classifica- 
tion, under  such  regular  academic  headings  as 
Mathematics,  Science,  Economics,  Geography, 
History,  Reading,  Composition  and  Drawing. 
While  these  subjects  will  be  experimentally 
rather  than  academically  pursued,  it  will  be  a 
matter  of  small  moment  and  short  time  for  pu- 
pils to  make  up  deficiencies  which  the  traditional 
school  courses  require.  This  is  true  because 
the  pupils  will  have  had  first  hand  experience 
with  the  subject  matter  in  which  the  ordinary 
school  child  is  trained  or  hears  about.  The  free 
pursuit  of  their  studies  will  give  them  a  famili- 
arity and  speaking  acquaintance  with  the  sub- 
ject matter  with  which  the  traditional  school  is 
avowedly  concerned  but  which  it  handles  and 
guards  as  though  it  were  the  custodian  of  some 
precious,  but  insubstantial  matter,  belonging 
to  a  world  somewhat  attenuated. 

It  is  the  intention  of  this  educational  experi- 
ment to  bring  down  the  great  enterprise  of  in- 
dustry, so  far  as  it  is  possible  to  its  real  char- 
acter and  to  high  accomplishment,  and  in  so 
doing  to  give  the  young  people  the  experience 
of  the  industrial  adventure  and  full  achieve- 
ment, lest  they  become  the  subjects  of  those 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE    133 

who  control  the  movements  of  industry  and 
determine  the  character  of  its  advance.  The 
practical  test  of  the  experiment  briefly  outlined 
would  be:  (1)  Was  the  creative  impulse 
aroused?  (2)  Were  standards  of  workmanship 
discovered  and  sustained?  (3)  Was  a  broad  as 
well  as  a  working  knowledge  of  subject  matter 
acquired?  (4)  Did  the  children  approach  es- 
tablished methods  in  a  spirit  of  hospitality  and 
of  inquiry  as  to  their  validity?  (5)  Did  the 
problems  create  sufficient  interest  to  arouse  the 
desire  and  will  to  reject  faulty  methods,  and  in- 
troduce others  of  greater  service?  (6)  Was  the 
enterprise  a  productive  one  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  market  and  an  educational  one  from 
the  point  of  view  of  growth? 

Such  experiments  educators  and  engineers 
would  enter  together  and  together  enjoy  in  re- 
ality the  development  of  creative  effort,  which 
is  their  profession.  Such  productive  educa- 
tional experiments  in  the  absence  of  profiteer- 
ing would  give  meaning  to  the  early  years  of  in- 
dustrial life  which  now  lead  the  children  no- 
where. They  would  give  the  young  people,  as 
the  experiments  come  up  to  the  test,  the  spirit 
for  the  adventure  of  industrial  life,  the  courage 


134  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

and  desire  for  solving  the  pressing  issues  of 
their  time. 

If  the  claim  made  by  employers  were  true, 
that  from  95  to  99  per  cent  of  the  working 
force  is  without  productive  impulse,  that  this 
condition  of  development  represents,  as  they 
say  it  does,  the  "native  limitation "  of  the  men 
who  work,  industry  as  a  progressive  enterprise 
is  doomed  and  high  hopes  for  civilization  are 
without  foundation. 

If  the  position  of  employers  is  true  and  the 
limitations  of  individuals  are  as  final  as  they 
have  determined,  there  is  nothing  to  do  except 
perfect  the  mechanical  responses  of  men.  This 
preeminently  would  be  the  business  of  employ- 
ers and  not  of  education  which  is  concerned 
with  the  growth  of  the  individual.  On  such  a 
basis,  it  is  inconceivable  that  educators  would 
concern  themselves  with  preparing  people  for 
industry.  If,  however,  these  limitations  are  not 
native,  but  are  due  to  some  incompatibility  be- 
tween the  institution  of  industry  and  the  in- 
terest of  the  labor  force,  then  the  limitations 
of  workers  and  of  industry  are  a  matter  of  par- 
amount importance  in  the  field  of  education. 

As  I  have  said  before  there  is  a  common  sup- 
position among  people  who  are  not  employers 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE    135 

of  labor,  that  such  features  of  industry  as  the 
mechanical  devices  of  modern  technology  and 
the  division  of  labor  in  factory  organization, 
are  in  their  nature  opposed  to  the  expansive 
development  of  the  people  involved;  that  these 
features  of  apparent  intrinsic  importance  to 
mass  production,  are  antagonistic  to  individual 
growth  and  to  the  interest  of  workers  in  produc- 
tive effort. 

Without  question,  it  is  the  business  of  educa- 
tors to  determine  whether  such  features  of  in- 
dustry as  machinery  and  the  division  of  labor 
are  fundamentally  opposed  to  growth  or 
whether  they  are  opposed  only  in  the  way  in 
which  they  have  been  put  to  use  and  directed. 
We  can  discover  whether  or  not  these  features 
are  opposed  only  as  the  people  concerned  have 
the  chance  to  master  them  and  undertake, 
through  their  experience,  to  turn  them  to  ac- 
count. 

Because  industry  has  been  impersonalized 
and  the  mechanics  of  associated  effort  in  in- 
dustry worked  out  in  such  large  measure,  it  is 
to-day  possible  to  conceive  of  spiritual  as  well 
as  physical  association  in  productive  enterprise. 
A  difficulty  in  the  way  of  this  conception,  aside 
from  the  business  complex,  is  our  habit  of  think- 


136  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

ing  exclusively  of  creative  effort  as  an  individ- 
ual expression.  In  describing  the  individual 
expression  we  would  say  that  a  man  may  create 
a  machine  but  that  when  men  jointly  produce 
one  they  work.  The  creative  act  is  in  the  con- 
ception of  the  machine  in  conjunction  with  its 
construction,  and  the  conception,  after  our 
habit  of  thinking,  is  an  individual  and  isolated 
achievement.  As  a  matter  of  fact  it  frequently 
is.  A  man  may  create  a  machine  if  he  conceives 
it  and  constructs  it  or  if  he  conceives  and  directs 
its  construction.  Those  he  directs,  those  who 
do  the  work  of  construction  alone,  do  not  par- 
ticipate in  the  creative  act,  as  the  creative  act  is 
the  concentrated  intellectual  and  emotional  ex- 
pression and  effort  to  produce  an  article  or 
idea.  The  creative  impulse  is  concerned  with 
the  transforming  of  a  concept  or  some  material 
into  an  expanded  concept  or  a  new  object.  The 
creative  impulse  itself  finds  its  satisfaction  in 
the  process  of  completion  and  loses  its  force 
when  the  concept  or  object  is  produced.  The 
use  of  the  concept  or  object  created  is  not  a 
characteristic  of  the  creative  but  of  the  social 
impulse.  A  man  who  is  interested  in  the  use 
or  application  of  a  product,  the  value  it  has  for 
others,  possesses  the  social  impulse  as  well  as 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE    137 

the  creative.  One  impulse  is  intensive  and  the 
other  extensive. 

But  the  creative  effort  is  not  necessarily  an 
individual  matter.  It  may  be  possible  for  a 
group  of  people  to  associate  cordially  and  free- 
ly together  with  a  single  creative  purpose  and 
endeavor.  It  may  be  possible  for  each  worker 
to  experience  the  joy  of  creative  work  as  he 
takes  part  with  others  in  the  planning  of  the 
work  along  with  the  labor  of  fabrication.  It  is 
a  creative  experience  or  dull  labor  as  his  asso- 
ciation with  others  in  the  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem is  freely  pursued  and  genuine,  or  as  it  is 
forced  and  perfunctory. 

My  justification  for  making  this  assertion 
will  be  recognized  by  every  one  who  has  had  the 
opportunity  to  attend  shop  meetings  of  a  newly 
organized  trade  union.  These  meetings  are 
unique  as  they  disclose  the  force  in  a  produc- 
tive group,  and  the  value  of  giving  the 
individuals  engaged  in  routine  work  the  oppor- 
tunity to  pool  their  common  experience 
and  pass  judgment  on  methods  of  work. 
Whatever  decisions  these  workers  come  to, 
none  are  fully  realized  or  freely  pursued  under 
conditions  which  industry  imposes.  But  in  the 
course  of  shop  meeting  discussions,  it  becomes 


138  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

clear  to  an  observer  that  methods  of  work  is  as 
absorbing  a  topic  as  the  relation  of  the  work 
to  the  wage.  The  routine  which  is  the  apparent 
result  of  the  division  of  labor,  becomes  under 
discussion  a  matter  of  technical  import.  The 
workers '  knowledge  of  labor  saving  devices  and 
their  resources  for  inventing  new  ones  are  as 
expert  as  is  the  business  man's  knowledge  of 
how  labor  cost  can  be  saved.  This  matter  un- 
der discussion  is  of  high  interest  and  concern. 
There  is  an  integrity  in  the  concern  which  evi- 
dently springs  from  experience  and  the  sup- 
pressed interest  in  perfecting  methods  and  the 
inter-relation  of  the  workers  in  a  shop.  The 
vitality  and  intelligence  of  these  machine  ten- 
ders may  well  inspire  the  agitator  who  ad- 
dresses their  meetings  to  curse  a  system  which 
withholds  full  knowledge  of  the  workshop  and 
blocks  the  opportunity  for  eager  workers  to  try 
out  new  schemes  born  of  intensive  experience 
and  failure  to  function  in  the  fullness  of  their 
capacity. 

Industry  offers  opportunities  for  creative  ex- 
perience which  is  social  in  its  processes  as  well 
as  in  its  destination.  The  imaginative  end  of 
production  does  not  terminate  with  the  posses- 
sion of  an  article ;  it  does  not  center  in  the  prod- 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE     139 

uct  or  in  the  skill  of  this  or  that  man,  but  in  the 
development  of  commerce  and  technological 
processes  and  the  evolution  of  world  acquaint- 
anceship and  understanding.  Modern  machin- 
ery, the  division  of  labor,  the  banking  system, 
methods  of  communication,  make  possible  real 
association.  But  they  are  real  and  possible 
only  as  the  processes  are  open  for  the  common 
participation,  understanding  and  judgment  of 
those  engaged  in  industrial  enterprise;  they 
are  real  and  possible  as  the  animus  of  industry 
changes  from  exploitation  to  a  common  and  as- 
sociated desire  to  create ;  they  are  real  and  pos- 
sible as  the  individual  character  of  industry 
gives  way  before  the  evolution  of  social  effort. 
We  speak  of  interdependence  in  industrial 
enterprise  as  though  it  were  some  new  thing. 
The  early  interdependence  had  its  roots  in  the 
common  knowledge  and  use  of  an  inherited  tech- 
nology, where  property  was  common  in  the 
common  use  of  it.  Interdependence  due  to  mod- 
ern technology  has  increased,  and  the  interde- 
pendence which  characterizes  our  own  time  is 
economic.  The  tools  of  industry  as  well  as  the 
natural  resources  are  owned,  and  only  by  appli- 
cation to  the  owner  can  a  man  live  or  labor. 
However  disastrous  that  ownership  has  been  to 


140  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

past  generations,  it  has  bound  men  together  in 
their  use  of  what  we  ironically  call  labor  saving 
devices;  devices  which  have  not  saved  labor  in 
the  interest  of  labor. 

-f^Out  of  this  close  association  of  men  in  indus- 
try have  grown  our  national  and  international 
business  corporations  and  our  national  and  in- 
ternational labor  unions.  These  corporations 
and  unions  are  transforming  local  and  provin- 
cial relations  into  cosmopolitan  acquaintance- 
ship. The  recognized  value  of  the  acquaintance 
is  in  the  extension  of  knowledge  of  people 
through  their  use  and  wont  of  material  things, 
of  the  ways  and  means  of  life  outside  limited 
and  personal  areas.  The  acquaintanceship  does 
not  imply  friendship  or  sympathy  or  under- 
standing among  men  or  nations,  it  does  not 
necessarily  result  in  wisdom,  and  to  date,  it 
does  not  result  in  a  larger  social  spirit.  The 
acquaintanceship  is  based  not  on  mutuality  of 
interest,  but  rather  on  rivalry  and  misinterpre- 
tations. 

While  our  institutional  life  is  an  acknowledg- 
ment that  interdependence  is  a  necessary  factor 
in  modern  wealth  production,  we  still  measure 
the  strength  of  a  man,  or  a  society,  or  a  nation, 
and  say  of  all  that  they  are  strong  or  weak  as 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE     141 

they  are  able  apparently  to  stand  alone.  We 
have  not  yet  discovered  that  a  desire  to  stand 
alone  in  an  enterprise  where  people  are  of 
necessity  dependent,  is  a  weakness  and  that  our 
ability  to  cooperate  with  others  in  such  an  en- 
terprise is  a  measure  of  our  strength.  "From 
a  social  standpoint  dependence  denotes  a  power 
rather  than  a  weakness ;  it  involves  interdepen- 
dence. There  is  always  danger  that  increased 
personal  independence  will  decrease  the  social 
capacity  of  an  individual.  In  making  him  more 
self-reliant,  it  makes  him  more  self-sufficient; 
it  may  lead  to  aloofness  and  indifference. 
It  often  makes  an  individual  so  insensitive  in 
his  relation  to  others  as  to  develop  an  illusion 
of  being  really  able  to  stand  and  act  alone,  an 
unnamed  form  of  insanity  which  is  responsible 
for  a  large  part  of  the  remediable  suffering  of 
the  world/'* 

This  provincial  desire  of  individuals  to  stand 
apart  and  prove  to  themselves  and  to  others 
that  they  are  exceptional  people  is  a  primitive 
ambition  in  conflict  with  the  actual  facts  of  a 
present  day  society  where  interdependence  is  a 
law  of  living.  This  conflict  is  kept  alive  by  the 
industrial  motive  of  exploitation  of  people  and 

*  John  Dewey — Democracy  and  Education,  p.  52. 


142  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

i 

of  wealth.  Exploitation  precludes  sympathy 
as  it  precludes  growth.  "For  sympathy — as  a 
desirable  quality  is  something  more  than  mere 
feeling;  it  is  cultivated  imagination  for  what 
men  have  in  common  and  rebellion  at  what- 
ever unnecessarily  divides  them."  And  fur- 
ther, Professor  Dewey  remarks:  "It  must  be 
borne  in  mind  that  ultimately  social  efficiency 
means  neither  more  nor  less  than  capacity  to 
share  in  a  give-and-take  experience.  It  covers 
all  that  makes  one 's  own  experience  more  worth 
while  to  others  and  all  that  makes  one  partici- 
pate more  richly  in  the  worth  while  experiences 
of  others."* 

What  Professor  Dewey  says  in  reference  to 
the  growth  of  children  and  adults  is  as  abun- 
dantly significant  in  its  application  to  society. 
"Normal  child  and  normal  adult  alike  .  .  .  are 
engaged  in  growing.  The  difference  between 
them  is  not  the  difference  between  growth  and 
no  growth,  but  between  the  modes  of  growth 
appropriate  to  different  conditions.  With  re- 
spect to  the  development  of  powers  devoted  to 
coping  with  specific  scientific  and  economic 
problems  we  may  say  the  child  should  be  grow- 
ing in  manhood.  With  respect  to  sympathetic 

*  John  Dewey — Democracy  and  Education,  p.  141. 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE    143 

curiosity,  unbiassed  responsiveness,  and  open- 
ness of  mind,  we  may  say  that  the  adult  should 
be  growing  in  childlikeness. ' '  * 

As  America  and  the  greater  part  of  Europe 
have  been  for  over  a  century  devoting  their 
attention  to  coping  with  specific  scientific  and 
economic  problems,  is  their  manhood  due  to 
appear?  Is  the  raw,  immature  character  of 
present  day  association  and  interdependence  to 
be  enriched  by  sympathetic  curiosity,  unbiased 
responsiveness  and  openness  of  mind?  In  the 
midst  of  this  world  war  I  venture  no  pre- 
diction on  the  appearance  of  manhood.  But 
clearly  there  is  a  line  of  action  for  educators  to 
pursue.  Clearer  than  ever  before  it  is  evident 
that  it  is  the  business  of  educators  to  see  that 
schemes  of  education  are  introduced  which  do 
not  fit  children  into  a  system  of  industry  that 
serves  either  Empire  or  business,  but  a  system 
that  serves  whole-heartedly  creative  enterprise 
as  it  might  be  pursued  in  the  period  of  youth 
as  well  as  in  adult  life.  Within  the  past  century 
and  particularly  in  the  past  generation  we  have 
made  brave  efforts  at  cooperation,  but  our  fail- 
ures to  realize  the  spirit  of  cooperation  are  as 
notorious  as  the  efforts  themselves.  The  effort 

*  John  Dewey — Democracy  and  Education,  p.  59. 


144  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

to  work  together  in  industry  has  been  brutal 
rather  than  brave.  We  shall  account  for  this 
brutality  in  industry  and  recognize  why  the 
spirit  for  cooperation  in  other  fields  has  failed, 
as  we  distinguish  between  a  puerile  desire  of 
individuals  to  express  themselves  and  their  im- 
pulses for  creative  enterprise. 

As  industry  through  the  ages  has  changed 
from  the  isolated  business  of  provisioning  a 
family  to  the  associated  work  of  provisioning 
the  world,  it  has  blazed  a  pathway  for  relation- 
ships which  are  socially  creative.  But  art  in 
social  relationships  will  not  be  realized  until  a 
passionate  desire  for  the  unlimited  expression 
of  creative  effort  overcomes  inordinate  desires 
of  individuals  for  self-expression.  Art  in  living 
together  is  possible  where  the  intensive  interest 
of  individuals  in  their  personal  affairs  and  at- 
tainments, in  their  social  group,  in  their  voca- 
tion, in  their  political  state,  is  deeply  tempered 
by  a  wide  interest  and  sympathetic  regard  for 
the  life  of  other  groups  and  people.  Art  in 
social  relationships  is  contingent  on  broad  sym- 
pathies and  extended  relationships,  and  it  is 
contingent  as  well  on  ability  to  work  for  social 
ends  while  remaining  in  large  measure  disre- 
gardful  of  the  personal  stakes  involved.  Be- 


INDUSTRY  AND  ENTERPRISE    145 

cause  of  our  inability  to  lose  our  personal 
attachment  for  our  own  work,  because  of  what 
it  may  yield  us  in  personal  ways,  the  world 
never  yet  has  experienced  the  joy  and  creative 
possibility  of  associated  effort.  And  because 
it  has  not  we  have  still  to  experience  art  in  social 
contact. 

In  group  work  there  may  be  as  much  power 
to  release  emotional  and  intellectual  creative 
force  as  in  individual  work ;  there  may  be  more 
— we  do  not  know.  There  is  a  tendency  we  do 
know  in  isolated,  individual  creative  effort, 
imless  highly  charged  with  creative  impulse, 
to  cultivate  personal  equations  intensively,  limit 
relationships,  and  circumscribe  vision.  As  the 
movement  of  our  time  is  toward  world  acquaint- 
anceship, the  desire  of  individuals  to  limit  their 
experiences  for  the  sake  of  intensifying  them, 
signifies  from  a  social  point  of  view  as  well  as 
a  personal,  a  neurotic  tendency.  There  is  a 
common  and  false  supposition  that  the  neu- 
rotic temperament  is  induced  in  the  world  of 
art.  It  is  true  that  an  art  environment 
attracts  people  whose  creative  impulse  is 
feeble  or  not  sufficiently  strong  to  sublimate 
the  desire  for  intensive  personal  excitation. 
Such  people  choose  art  associations  because 


146  CREATIVE  IMPULSE  IN  INDUSTRY 

they  are  limited  to  individual  expression  and 
not  because  of  the  overpowering  necessity  to  do 
work  which  is  creative.  As  the  era  in  which  we 
live  represents  a  struggle  for  associated  work 
and  common  interests  and  its  highest  concept 
is  opposed  to  limited  interests  and  autocratic 
rule,  we  may  well  give  our  best  endeavor  to 
realizing  creative  impulse  in  the  field  of  asso- 
ciated effort,  in  the  hope  that  the  field  of  art 
will  be  some  day  coextensive  with  life,  and  that 
its  expressions  will  not  be  confined  to  the  lim- 
ited world  of  sculptors,  painters,  musicians  and 
poets. 


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